Dr Diane Jofuku Okamuro is a Program Director for the Plant Genome Research Program (PGRP) at the National Science Foundation, Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO), Division of Integrative Organismal Systems
The PGRP supports functional genomics tool development and basic discovery research on a genome-wide scale in and/or relevant to plants that are important to the U.S. economy such as maize, soybean, tomato, cotton, wheat and rice. The PGRP Cluster also manages the Plant Genome Research Postdoctoral Fellowships program which is part of the BIO-wide Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology program. In addition, she currently serves on the Working Group for the Enabling Discovery through Genomic Tools (EDGE) program. EDGE seeks to support the development of functional genomic tools, approaches and associated infrastructure to enable genome manipulation in diverse, emerging model organisms.
Dr Okamuro received her PhD in Biology from UCLA and is a plant molecular geneticist by training. She has broad-based experience in cutting-edge genomics technologies and has held research and management positions in both academia and industry prior to joining NSF in 2005.