After John Finer received his MS and PhD from Texas A&M University, he became a postdoctoral fellow at Syngenta. He spent his academic career at The Ohio State University working primarily on tissue culture and transformation of different plants, as well as soybean promoter isolation and characterization using GFP and automated image collection and analysis. He was active in transformation during the development of many of the breakthrough technologies, having constructed an inexpensive and easy-to-operate gene gun, and co-discovering sonication as a means to enhance Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. John Finer retired in 2021 and is now an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Horticulture and Crop Science at The Ohio State University and Courtesy Faculty in The Water School at Florida Gulf Coast University, where he continues to play in the laboratory with orchids.