Well, history is one factor here. The University of California at Davis is a campus that started out as the farm of UC Berkeley. And so our history is agriculture. Through the last century, more and more programs were gradually moved from Berkeley out to what was then called "the farm" to teach the students more in the agricultural area. These included a lot of subjects that could only broadly be described as agriculture. We're talking about food sciences and nutrition, for instance. These are the types of things that we started out with as a remote research site for UC Berkeley. Then in the late 1950s, UC Davis became an independent campus and a full university in its own right. Now, we're the most complete, in terms of programs, of any campus in the UC system. We have a medical school, a law school, a veterinary school, etc. The College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences remains a very important and critical college within this university. About 25% of the undergraduate students, and slightly more of the graduate students, are enrolled in this college.

  Are there specific individuals or groups within your institution who deserve credit or special commendation for the high ranking?

Well, there are individuals who are listed in your top list of scientist citations. But I would say that, generally speaking, we could attribute our success not to a few particular stars, but more to a campus culture that really encourages collaboration. Here, the barriers between departments and colleges are very low and there's a lot of collaboration that goes on across disciplines. I think this creates an environment in which people are able to accomplish significant achievements. For instance, our graduate programs are largely intercollegiate. In other words, students who want to study, say, crop genetics, would get a degree in genetics, but that graduate degree could also be offered from the division of biological sciences or the medical school. And that encourages collaboration between schools and departments.

  Do you also actively encourage collaboration outside UC Davis?

Yes we do. Within the UC system, there are two other colleges that involve agriculture. UC Berkeley still retains some programs, and then UC Riverside has an active program. We work very closely with both these institutions. The deans meet at least three or four times a year, if not more, to talk about our collaborative programs and assure that they work smoothly. And the faculty are given opportunities for collaboration within the UC system through common grant programs that assure this possibility. Outside the UC system, that kind of collaboration is encouraged through NIH and NSF grants, and our faculty members are very successful in those, as well. I'll give you a concrete example. The NSF Plant Genomics Initiative is one that includes multiple institutions and collaboration between them and we are part of that program. We probably have been more successful in capturing those types of grants than any other institution in the country. If you went and checked the grants awarded, the last time I looked, we were far above anybody else in those numbers. That, again, also reflects the broad-based strength within the institution in this area.

  What role does the administration play in fostering research in this area?

I would say that the reality of the modern research university is that the institution does its best to provide the infrastructure for research—the laboratories and core facilities. This is the type of thing into which we invest a lot of resources—building the type of core facilities that can be shared among researchers. Clearly it's been an institutional decision to invest a large amount of our resources in this type of activity. We then have seed-grant activity. But we look at infrastructure and facility development as our primary responsibility and then the faculty obtain research funds from competitive grants.

  Does geography play a role in UC Davis's strength as an agricultural school?

In some sense. We're located east of San Francisco in the Central Valley of California, which is probably the most productive agricultural valley in the country. And California is the most productive agricultural state in the country. We tend to think of it as an urban state with lots of natural resources, which it is, but it is also by far the largest agricultural state. Our value of agricultural product is double that of the nearest competition. So agriculture is still very important in California. And while our faculty have total freedom to work on whatever they choose and on where to get their funding, there is a still a lot of work aimed at the state level. That's primarily driven by the investigators themselves. We try to provide opportunities: for instance, the agricultural industries of California do provide research funds and scientists can compete for these, and so that does attract them to work on problems of local interest.

  What are the greatest challenges for your institution in keeping up its level of excellence?

I would say that, as it with any public institution, it's money. The facilities become antiquated and the state of California is growing rapidly so our student enrollments are ever increasing. To keep up with that increase, you have to keep adding faculty as well as research and teaching facilities. And that leads to an on-going challenge of finding the resources to make it happen—particularly when states can find many other uses for their tax dollars. The University of California is very grateful for the resources it receives from the state, but the largest proportion of resources are not directly from the state. They come from tuition, research contracts, and gifts. These all contribute to the total budget.

Let me give you another concrete example, which stems directly from our service, for instance, to the wine industry of California. After prohibition in the 1920s, the California wine industry was essentially non-existent and had to be largely built up again from scratch. It was our department of viticulture and enology that largely trained the people who went in and helped the industry reestablish itself. And people in the wine industry are constantly showing their gratification in various ways for what the university has done over the years. The most recent example is Robert Mondavi, who just gave a gift of $35 million to the university, $25 million of which will go to what will be called The Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Sciences. We're building a new $75 million complex of buildings and facilities to house this new institute. Again it came as a result of contributions of past faculty and students to the industry.

  Is there any other message you would like to convey to the general public about your institution?

Yes. One of the things that characterizes our program is that we bring, and very strongly pull into collaboration, the environmental sciences with the agricultural sciences. They're both within our college. And so our faculty are working in the area of environmental sciences as associated with agriculture. The way we see it, agriculture is a component of the environment. It's all a single system of life, in a sense. Agriculture is a part. Natural resources are a part. And we're learning how to manage them all in a sustainable way. It's an important aspect of what we do.

  What do you see as the future of the department?

There are two broad areas for the future that are critical for us. One is, of course, a better understanding of the genetic basis of life—genomics and proteomics. This is the major area of investment for us.

We are building a major new genomics center that will link biology, medicine, engineering and agriculture all together into a single genomics facility. It will be a very large building—something like 90,000 assignable square feet. And I think the key here is that there will be few if any barriers between the disciplines. We'll be looking at animal genomics and plant genomics and microbial genomics and human genomics all as a continuum. We're very excited about how our understanding of human genomics is going to lead us to be able to design foods for what amounts to nutritional prevention of human disease. Agricultural genomics offers an opportunity to do just that: to learn how to manipulate the different components within food to enhance those that are health giving and get rid of those that aren't. And that's the kind of thing that we can accomplish by collaboratively linking together agriculture, nutrition, and biomedical sciences.

The other general area that we will be concentrating on in the future is the environment. How do we learn to live sustainably within our environment, with the ever-growing crush of people and increasing populations? Within 50 years, we're going to have to be feeding 50% more people on less land than we have available now. How do we do that in a sustainable way, while maintaining the biological ethics that are so important to us? That is our other challenge and focus for the future.