Richard A. Jorgensen

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Richard "Rich" A. Jorgensen is an American molecular geneticist and an early pioneer in the study of post transcriptional gene silencing.

His and Dr. Carolyn Napoli's observations of pigment gene 'cosuppression' in Petunia flowers are examples of post transcriptional gene silencing that predated the discovery of RNAi and contribute to the current understanding of the commonality of RNA-mediated gene silencing in eukaryotes. Their initial observations were made while working at the U.S. biotech company DNA Plant Technology Inc. and form part of the basis of a number of U.S. patents on gene regulation and crop manipulation.

Jorgensen holds a B.S. in biomedical engineering and a M.S. in chemistry from Northwestern University. In 1978, he received a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Jorgensen is currently associate professor at the University of Arizona and editor in chief of The Plant Cell.

He is also now the lead investigator and director of the iPlant Collaborative - a major new investment of $50 Million to "change the way we do science" [1]. According to the NSF this is "the first national cyberinfrastructure center to tackle global "grand challenge" plant biology questions that have great implications on larger questions regarding the environment, agriculture, energy and the very organisms that sustain our existence on earth".

The cyberinfrastructure and the researchers will rely heavily on computational thinking, a form of problem-solving that assigns computers the jobs they're most efficient at, and in doing so frees up humans to spend more time on the creative tasks that humans do best. The iPlant cyberinfrastructure will serve as a model for solving problems in fields outside of plant biology too.