Toni Kutchan Toni Kutchan is a Member and Principle Investigator at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis. Previously, she spent twenty years working in Germany, holding positions as Professor and Department Head at the Leibniz Institute for Plant Biochemistry in Halle, Germany, as well as Managing Director of that institute. Her primary research interests are the biosynthesis of plant medicinal compounds such as alkaloids and the metabolic engineering of medicinal plants. She has been a member of the Board of Scientific Advisors of the Schering Research Foundation, a member of the Central Selection Committee of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, is on the editorial board of The Plant Journal and Phytochemistry and has served as Coordinator of the German Science Foundation Priority Program “Evolution of Metabolic Diversity.” She has published numerous articles reporting her research, is a frequent international lecturer and is a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. She holds a B.S. in Chemistry from the Illinois Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from St. Louis University.