Name: Mark J. Millard   Title: Geneticist Organization: USDA-ARS-MWA-PIRU Role/Crops/Team: Mr. Millard serves as the Maize Curator of over 21,000 accessions from the genus Zea consisting of corn and its direct ancestor teosinte. He also maintains seed of small collections of Coix and Tripsacum. Besides supervising the regeneration of accessions, duties include acquisition and characterization of accessions, providing germplasm from the collection to researchers or information on other sources, and curating information on the accessions in the collection. Mr. Millard has also been heavily involved with the Germplasm Resources Information Network (GRIN) of the National Plant Germplasm System since its inception. He is the Unit Liaison to GRIN serving on the Advisory Committee to the Database Management Unit which recommends procedures and standards for the database and assists station staff in using the database. Special Interests: Mr. Millard is currently developing computerized tools for efficiently imaging maize and its relatives and organizing the images for the GRIN and the PIRU image databases. These images are used for quality assurance and characterization purposes. He is experimenting with growth regulators to manage plant height in Zea of tall accessions for more efficient greenhouse and field regenerations.  Mark is actively involved in the GRIN-Global project. Education:   B.S. Agronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, 1977. B.A. Botany and General Science, University of Iowa, Iowa City, 1976. Employment History: 2005-Current: Geneticist / Maize Curator PIRU, USDA-ARS, Ames, Iowa.   1993-2005: Curator II / Maize Curator, Iowa State University, PIRU, Ames, Iowa.   1987-1993: Coordinator III / Computers and Maize Curatorial Project, Iowa State University, PIRU, Ames, Iowa. 1980-1987: Research Associate I / Maize and New Crops, Iowa State University, PIRU, Ames, Iowa.