Richard Amasino is a professor of biochemistry and genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He got his bachelor's degree in biology at Pennsylvania State University. He went on to receive his PhD in biochemistry at Indiana University in 1982 and did post doctoral research at the University of Washington.^[2] Amasino's research focuses on plants and how plants know when to flower. In 2006 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.^[3]

Amasino’s research has focused on how plants know when to flower after exposure to winter, a process called vernalization.^[2] Amasino discovered that annual and biennial Brassicaceae—and in particular Arabidopsis thaliana—will only flower after prolonged cold treatment by shutting off a gene called Flowering Locus C (FLC).^[4] Recently, his work has centered on vernalization responses in temperate grasses using Brachypodium distachyon.^[5]