Rita Colwell, former president of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute, became director of the National Science Foundation in 1998. The foundation’s funding, distributed to nearly 200,000 people each year, has grown to more than $4.8 billion, $75 million of which is directed specifically to plant genome research. One of Colwell’s main efforts is a functional genomics program known as the 2010 Project, which aims to determine the functions of the 25,000 Arabidopsis genes by 2010.