Personal Bio: Dr. Kochian received his B.S. in Botany from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1978 and his Ph.D. in Plant Physiology from the University of California, Davis, in 1983 under the direction of Dr. William Lucas. After 1 year as a postdoctoral associate and lecturer at UC Davis, Dr. Kochian joined the USDA-ARS in 1985 as a Plant Physiologist at the U.S. Plant, Soil and Nutrition Laboratory on the Cornell University campus in Ithaca, NY. In 1986, Dr. Kochian joined the faculty in the Section of Plant Biology at Cornell as an Adjunct Assistant Professor, and then joined the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences as an adjunct faculty member in 1987. Currently, Dr. Kochian is an Adjunct Professor in both the Department of Plant Biology and the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences as well as a member of the graduate fields of Plant Biology, Soil and Crop Sciences, and Environmental Toxicology. Dr. Kochian has been the thesis advisor for Ph.D. students in all three of these fields, and teaches the graduate course in Plant Mineral Nutrition at Cornell University. In 1997, Dr. Kochian became Director of the U.S. Plant, Soil and Nutrition Laboratory.