After earning a PhD in cereal chemistry and plant breeding from NDSU in 1967, Villegas and her colleague, Dr. Surinder Vasal, worked tirelessly to produce and analyze germplasm (the tissue that contains a plant’s genetic information), processing up to 25,000 samples a year. Their research enabled them to breed critical amino acids into maize without sacrificing nutritional value or yield, a feat no other scientist before them had been able to achieve.