Margaret E. Smith came to Cornell University in 1987 as a faculty member in the College of Agriculture and Life Science’s Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, focusing on corn breeding. Her research is primarily on field corn, but also includes limited work on sweet corn. Her program emphasizes breeding for productivity and adaptation to New York growing conditions, improving insect and disease resistance, adapting varieties to more sustainable production systems, breeding for organic systems, and exploring farmer-participatory plant breeding. Until spring 2002, she taught a course on genetic improvement of crop plants. From 1998 until 2001, Margaret served as the Associate Director for Cornell Cooperative Extension in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Upon completion of her half-time administration assignment, she returned full time to the Plant Breeding and Genetics faculty to continue her corn breeding research and to serve as the Department Extension Leader. In her extension role, she conducts educational programs for agricultural audiences on crop varieties and seeds, and on plant genetic engineering for diverse public audiences. Before coming to Cornell, Margaret worked for several years in Latin America, first as a plant breeder at the Tropical Agriculture Center for Research and Teaching in Turrialba, Costa Rica, and later as a corn breeder at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Texcoco, Mexico. The focus of her work in both of these positions was on improving crop varieties for small-scale and subsistence farmers in the tropics – a research interest she maintains to date. She currently has collaborative projects in Kenya and South Africa.