Researcher Spotlight
James Fischer
James is a research scientist with the Prof. Andrew Leakey lab in the department of Plant Biology. James takes a multi-faceted approach to studying the development of small but important plant structures, such as stomatal pores on the leaf. He seeks to understand how structures develop, their relationship with internal and external leaf anatomy in three-dimensions, the underlying genetic pathways of structure development, and how this knowledge can be utilized for development of drought-resistant crop lines. He uses an array of modern tools, including particle-accelerator-enhanced microCT imaging, machine learning pipelines for cell labelling, and developmental RNA-sequencing.
What do you see as the primary benefit to you of archiving your data in a repository?
The data I archived with the Data Bank includes high-resolution microCT scans and machine-learning labelled scans. The storage requirement for this dataset is high, including over 100,000 images, but the Data Bank made depositing and organizing the data a breeze. Other researchers could benefit from access to this novel dataset, and the Data Bank allows for easy and organized access to our data from interested researchers. The staff with the Data Bank were fantastic to work with, and were very thorough with their help! The sharing of data is crucial to the research process, and the Data Bank made it easy and accessible, and I recommend all UIUC researchers take advantage of this fantastic resource.