ABSTRACT
I was honored by the award of the 2024 Charles Goodyear Medal 42 yr after I received my PhD in plant biology and thank Drs Judit Puskas and Adel Halasa for their nominations and support over several yr as well as the selection committee. As the second woman and first biologist to receive this recognition, I will describe some of the basic and applied research that led me to my admiration of plants and subsequent focus on the biological and geographical diversification of the global natural rubber (NR) supply. My focus across federal, industrial, and academic appointments has continuously been on making research meaningful, and my basic research has always been tethered to strongly applied research translation and goals. Achieving domestic rubber production means that the entire value chain from seed to product must be validated, and every part presented and still presents specific research and development challenges. Fortunately, core scientific and engineering principles are constant and readily adaptable to new areas. Many people were happy to advise me in areas in which I had no formal training. My innovative research has led to 10 start-up companies, about 36 issued or pending patents, many with student inventors, over 310 published papers, and an H-index of 51. Working in NR is not only very interesting but has left me with an unshakable belief that my research is meaningful. Failure is not an option because the consequences of relying on a single clonal tree species for this critical material could be unimaginably bad if the rubber tree crop collapses and no alternatives have previously been established at a rapidly scalable level.