Dedicated scientists: a child's inspiration

During the summer of 2006, Dr. Usha Rani Palaniswamy returned with her father, Dr. K.M. Palaniswamy, to the International Rice Research Institute ( http://beta.irri.org )for the first time in 35 years. While yet a young child, her family moved from India to Los Baños, Philippines, in 1968 because her father was assigned to IRRI as a scholar in the Institutes Statistics Department.

She fondly recalls those days through the mind and eyes of a child and relates how the experience influenced her future career in science. When interviewed, she was an assistant professor of plant physiology at the University of Connecticut. Today, she is chair of the Division of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at Excelsior College in Albany, New York. She also pays loving tribute to her father, who at age 78 died tragically in a road accident in India on 5 December 2007, a little over a year after his own Pioneer Interview (see box) during the same 2006 IRRI visit. She is the co-author (with her father) of A handbook of statistics for teaching and research in plant and crop science and just recently of Asian crops and human dietetics.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• rice
• IRRI
• Philippines

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