Three years ago 21-year-old Josh Farr was a microbiology major at the University of Arizona, desperate for some laboratory experience on campus. The job he found took him to a summer cornfield. There, he learned to cross different varieties of maize and collect corn tissue samples for DNA testing in the department of plant sciences, in the UA College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

"It was a shock to me that this was science," Farr recalls. "I was out in the field sweating with long sleeves, pants and a hat."

Since then, he's come to appreciate the balance between the laboratory and outdoor work. He has prepared and isolated DNA samples for researchers to use and even participated in the adaptation of protocol for high throughput DNA extraction, while still performing periodic fieldwork.

Farr, who graduated last spring, is now a full-time research technician in the program where he started as a student. He and other students involved in the gene regulation have had the chance to explore natural gene silencing systems in maize, where heredity is somehow controlled -- not through the changes in DNA sequence, but through proteins that interact with the sequence to reversibly silence genes.

Findings in the lab are contributing to a better understanding of plant physiology, development and evolution, and also have practical applications in agriculture and in biology.

This type of research requires lots of plant tissue collection. As an undergraduate laboratory assistant, Farr spent more than two years collecting maize leaves, bringing them to the lab, freezing them and isolating the DNA for researchers to use in their experiments.

"I still have a lot of responsibility for the fieldwork," Farr says. "We plant, tag, sample and cross the corn, and then 40 to 45 days after pollination we harvest thousands of ears of corn." He does this twice annually. He happily went to Molokai, Hawaii, for several weeks to handle a crop there and work with prominent maize researchers.

In addition to increasing his laboratory skills, three years of analytical work in a high-powered scientific setting have changed the way Farr thinks. He often takes problems home in his head, trying to figure out why they didn't work.

"Through the research, I've learned to think on my own, which basically applies to everything I do in life," Farr says. "If you think through a protocol, you have to think through every step to see where it goes. Why fear failing? If you fail, you change your protocol and adapt it to the next trial. One goal of mine is to be fearless when doing research."

For Farr, his research experience has not only expanded his skills and approach to problem-solving, but also his career goals. Someday he'd like to get an advanced degree in public health and possibly work at the Centers for Disease Control.

In the meantime, he is a valued member of a research program that has given him the opportunity to set his sights a little higher than they were before he first entered that cornfield.

"The most important thing is that I went from hardly knowing how to pour solutions to adapting protocols and thinking on my own," Farr says.