Dr. Giovannoni is a San Francisco native who received a BS in Biochemistry at UC Davis in 1985. Jim received a Ph.D. in Molecular and Physiological Plant Biology from University of California, Berkeley in 1990. Jim spent 1990-1992 as a post-doctoral research associate at Cornell University in the laboratory of Steve Tanksley. In 1992 Jim took a position as Assistant Professor in the Horticultural Sciences Department at Texas A&M where he developed a research program based on analysis of developmental determinants of fruit ripening using molecular genetic and genomics approaches. Jim has been a Plant Molecular Biologist with the USDA-ARS Plant, Soil and Nutrition Laboratory in Ithaca, NY since late September 2000 and continues to work on tomato with emphases on genetic determinants of ripening and nutrient quality of fruit. Dr. Giovannoni's laboratory is housed in the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research (BTI) on the Cornell University campus. He holds the title of Scientist at the BTI and is an Adjunct Professor in the departments of Plant Biology, Plant Breeding and Horticultural Sciences at Cornell. The focus of research in the Giovannoni laboratory is molecular and genetic analysis of fruit ripening and related signal transduction systems with emphasis on aspects of nutritional quality. The laboratory is also part of a large National Science Foundation-funded tomato genomics consortium that recently initiated the international tomato genome sequencing effort. He has over 50 refereed publications and has five patents issued or pending.