Staff

• Administration
• BioMedia
• Education & Instruction

• Lauren Correri
• Mary Lamont
• Valerie Meszaros
• David Micklos
• Karen Orzel
• Carolyn Reid

• Anthony Biondo
• Cornel Ghiban
• Eun-sook Jeong
• Mohammed Khalfan
• Susan Lauter
• Sheldon McKay

• Amy Nisselle
• Christian Weidler
• Jason Williams
• Chun-hua Yang

• Elna Carrasco
• Jennifer Galasso
• Natalia Hanson
• Melissa Lee
• Alexandra Manaia
• Christine Marizzi

• Amanda McBrien
• Erin McKechnie
• Bruce Nash
• Oscar Pineda-Catalan
• Tedi Setton
• Jermel Watkins

Uwe Hilgert, Ph.D.

Manager of iPlant and External Affairs

Uwe Hilgert is no longer working at the DNA Learning Center, and is currently at the University of Arizona.

I am a biologist and science educator and first joined the DNALC in 2000. Before that I lived in Tucson, Arizona, and before that in Germany. It was not until I moved to the U.S. though, that I realized that my true calling is actually encoded in my name: Uwe = Up With Education.

I was always interested in nature and in people. When, as a kid, somebody asked me about my career plans, I moved back and forth between teaching and becoming a scientist. This all changed in high school, when I learned about DNA. I became fascinated by this alphabet of four nucleotides that encodes the instructions for all aspects of life, and decided to learn more about it and to study biology.

I became a micro- and molecular biologist and researched genes that affect the communication between microorganisms and plants. As a graduate student in the Max-Planck Institute for Plant Breeding in Cologne, Germany, I studied genes that affect the interactions between symbiotic (beneficial) soil bacteria and legumes, such as beans and peanuts. After receiving my doctorate, I was awarded a fellowship by the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation to conduct research at the University of Arizona in Tucson to study genes that affect the interactions between fungal plant pathogens and their prey, pea plants.

It was in Tucson that, to my surprise, I became involved in education again. At the time, I was so deeply immersed in research that I did not expect to ever work with anything but microorganisms and DNA. Following a chance visit to a 5th-grade classroom in Tucson, however, I became hooked on education. I first worked with elementary teachers helping them to improve their science teaching - and learning from them something about teaching in return. With a fellowship by the National Institute for Science Education (NISE) I then conducted research on teacher professional development. I also taught molecular biology to senior citizens. From 1996-2000, served 450 undergraduates in microbiology and veterinary science at The University of Arizona as curriculum coordinator and faculty advisor.

In 2000, I changed gears again and joined the DNALC at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. I developed curriculum in an emerging field in biology, bioinformatics, and teach students and teachers to use computers to identify the hidden information in DNA sequences. I also served the DNALC as its Assistant Director until I was appointed Assistant Dean of CSHL's graduate school, the Watson School of Biological Sciences in 2007. I helped navigate the Watson School through a transitional year and a change in Deans.

In 2008, I returned to the DNALC to participate in the educational component of a major project, the iPlant Collaborative. The goal of iPlant is to develop cyberinfrastructure and computational tools for the international plant science community.