Project: Archive of Agricultural Genetic Engineering and Society Center Interviewee: Dr. Mary-Dell Chilton, Distinguished Science Fellow, Syngenta (Retired) Interviewer: Matthew Booker, Alison Wynn Also present: Chris Tutino (Syngenta) and Maurizo Lewis-Streit (camera) Interview Date: February 17, 2016 Location: Hunt Library, North Carolina State University Length: 01:12:59 Learn more at https://go.ncsu.edu/AAGES See part 2 at: https://vimeo.com/326422678 SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT: https://research.ncsu.edu/ges/files/2020/07/Mary-Dell-Chilton-02162016_final-Part-1.pdf 00:16 - It’s February 17, 2016 here in Hunt Library. My name is Matthew Booker. I’m here with Alison Wynn and Mauricio Lewis Strite and with Dr. Mary-Dell Chilton. We’re conducting an interview for the archive of Genetic Engineering and Society. Could you please tell us your name, your institution, and your role? 01:09 - So on a daily level, what is it that you did when you’re in your lab or at Syngenta? 01:28 - And how is that work done? Do you do that work alone or do you do that work with a team of people? 01:55 - So if you were to name yourself as a particular kind of scientist, what branch of science would you identify with? 02:27 - Did you start out as a child with an interest in science? Was that something you imagined yourself doing from an early age? 02:46 - And what happened? Why did you become interested in high school? 03:51 - And did you pursue science as a university student? 05:44 - What was it about chemistry that you liked? 06:30 - So what years, to put a year on things, what year did you enter the University of Illinois? 07:11 - Had you traveled much before? Was this your first time in Seattle or outside of Illinois? 08:23 - So it’s a bold move to go to Seattle from Illinois. Where you, at that time, really committed to the doctoral work? Was that what drove you? 09:25 - So you finished up at the University of Washington. And then what? Did you imagine yourself being an academic? Did you imagine yourself returning to Illinois? What did you think would happen next? 10:15 - So I take it you did not stay at the University of Washington or you weren’t able to be a professor at the genetics department. 10:23 - So where did you go? 29:10 - Yes well I want to ask you a follow-up because you described a fascinating intellectual problem and question that you followed and pursued with a group of people and you described the realities of that took, running a proposal, convincing this professor to pay you to do the work so that you could pay others to give you childcare. But what did you imagine this basic research question might result in? Did you have a sense of how revolutionary the discovery would end up? You said it took about eight to ten years for the full ramifications to play out. But at the time you were doing the work, did you think that this would have applications beyond answering a fundamental question? Were you interested in those? 38:02 - So what was the culture—how did the culture diverge in industry than it was when you were in academia? What sort of switch was that for you other than—so you’re going to a lab that the way they were run—how you felt being in, you know, sort of one institution to a different type of institution? 42:47 - I think so. I was really wanting to know sort of the difference in what the culture was from one to the other and I think you did it a decent amount. 44:43 - I’d like to ask you another follow-up about something you’ve said before. You mentioned that the only women you knew in an academic position was Helen Whiteley—I think that’s the way you put it. And she was very important to you in a particular moment in your career. We’ve noticed in our interviews that there seem to be more women in biotechnology than some other fields of science. Was it your experience that there were women around? Or were you alone in these kind of critical moments as a graduate student, as a faculty member, in industry? Were there other women around or were you pioneering? 45:33 - And did that matter? Did you think that that mattered? Did it have implications for your work or for the career? 46:04 - And was that fifty percent of the faculty? 47:36 - You’ve mentioned a few people—a few names along the way—some of which are quite well known in the history of genetic engineering. And I’m wondering if there were particularly important figures for you in terms of collaboration like master, for example, or others once you entered industry. Were there people you collaborated with in industry or people you competed with in those early years in industry who you thought were significant in pushing your own discoveries? 49:06 - Who is he and why did he do that? 50:12 - Was he one of the two post-docs or were those separate?