Susan Anagnost: "Wood anatomy is a puzzle, and it is fun to solve the puzzle !"

Sue Anagnost is Professor Emeritus at the State University of New York (SUNY), College of Environmental Science  and Forestry, Syracuse, USA, where she continues to serve as the Director of the Tropical Timber Information Center. Sue always liked biology and studying plants, which brought her to wood anatomy, as it had an application to wood products. Beside wood anatomy Sue has also worked on topics such as wood ultrastructure, wood decay, and mycology, with light microscopy, scanning and transmission electron microscopy being always heavily utilized techniques in her work and in teaching.   Sue explains the importance of wood identification of tropical species to help preventing illegal timber trading. As wood anatomy for the identification of wood species is an "imperfect science", Sue also talks about using DNA and chemical fingerprint information to better identify commercially traded timber. With the todays developments in wood science, especially with the increasing mass timber constructions, she is convinced that wood anatomy will continue to be an attractive and important study method.