I am often reminded of the extraordinary opportunities available to our graduate and undergraduate students alike to pursue research with world-class faculty. Students' hard work and dedication, especially in the highly competitive environment of a comprehensive research university like Rutgers, can also earn them national and international recognition.  

I recently had the opportunity to meet one such student at our school, David Byrnes, a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Plant Biology and Pathology, who is being mentored by Prof. Jim Simon. David is one of just 30 recipients of a U.S. Borlaug Fellowship in Global Food Security for 2013-2014 for his research on the link between nutrition and sustainable agriculture in developing nations. His fellowship will take him to Tanzania to work at the World Vegetable Center.

Dean Bob Goodman and graduate student David Byrnes discuss
Lester Brown's Man, Land and Food (1963).

Bridging David Byrnes' undoubtedly promising future and Norm Borlaug's extraordinary legacy is the fine mind of one our own students from a generation ago: Lester Brown, College of Agriculture, Class of 1955. Brown, a young USDA economist in the early 1960s, conducted a seminal study of world food supplies and expanding world population that helped promote adoption of Borlaug's semi-dwarf wheats, which advanced global food production, especially first in Mexico and India. You know this epical advance as "The Green Revolution."