Unlocking a Family Legacy
Bill Cheadle's gift helps digitize his father's extraordinary botanical collection
As a child, Bill Cheadle sailed around the world on an ocean liner with his parents, Vernon and Mary. The family voyaged from San Francisco to Fiji, Australia, South Africa, Portugal, and London on his father’s Fulbright Fellowship to collect plants. They eventually returned to California, where Vernon would serve as the second chancellor of UC Santa Barbara from 1962–1977.
Vernon Cheadle pressed or pickled 15,000 plants on that trip alone. He also made 70,000 slides of microscopic plant structures. UC Santa Barbara’s Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration is home to his lifetime collection. In 2026, Bill’s support helped the center purchase a high-resolution scanning microscope to help digitize his father’s complex collection.
A process that would have taken decades will now be completed in years. Unlike traditional microscopes, this new instrument automates the process. Researchers can load six slides at once. A computer-controlled stage moves across each slide, photographing tissue and stitching the images into a single detailed scan. A full set can be scanned in 10 minutes. The microscope accommodates unconventional specimens, like whole leaves and historic glass lantern slides.
“In addition to being an administrator, my father was a botanist throughout his career. I really wanted to get his collections and others digitized. This scanning microscope — one of three in California — will allow the Cheadle Center to digitize his and other collections at a rapid rate. Any scientist anywhere in the world can go online and apply today’s technology to specimens that were collected 60-70 years ago,” said Bill.
Each Cheadle Collection specimen is meticulously labeled. Collections with this level of documentation are rare across the United States, making this one a valuable resource for research and preservation.
“Historically, people would make many tissue sections on microscope slides — take a root and make a ton of sections, then pick a couple for publication. Those slides still contain a huge amount of data that wasn't digitized. We are sitting on a massive dataset that we can now analyze with machine learning programs to learn new things,” said Assistant Professor Jesús Martínez-Gómez, who is leading the current effort.
Bill’s commitment to UC Santa Barbara is part of a broader family legacy, reflected in his service as a UC Santa Barbara Foundation trustee and his longstanding involvement with the Cheadle Center and its collections. By establishing an endowment for the Cheadle Center, Bill ensured its existence for future plant biologists.
“Dad always said that great universities attract great faculty, who attract great students. Right before he passed away, UC Santa Barbara was admitted to the Association of American Universities. There are only 71 universities in that elite organization. That was one of his major career goals,” said Bill.
During his childhood on campus, Bill watched his mother and father work as a team.
“What I learned is that science drives technology, which drives more science, and certainly drives medicine. Growing up here, I was exposed to all these incredibly brilliant people. I tried to soak in as much as I could,” said Bill.
“As director of the Cheadle Center, I see Bill Cheadle’s impact every day. I see it in the one million specimens we care for, the fantastic students we train, and the 350+ acres of campus natural areas we restore and steward. Bill has continued Vernon and Mary Cheadle’s legacy through his personal interest in the center and his commitment to ensuring that we have the tools needed to remain at the forefront of biodiversity research. I am especially grateful that he understands collections are not static archives; they are an active research infrastructure that becomes more valuable as new technologies emerge. Our high-resolution scanning microscope allows us to create detailed, measurable images of specimens, including structures too small to examine effectively with conventional photography, and share them with researchers and students anywhere in the world. Bill’s support is helping us connect the Cheadle family’s historic investment in UCSB’s collections with an innovative and accessible future,” said Katja Seltmann, Katherine Esau Director of the Cheadle Center.
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The Cheadle Center’s mission is to preserve and enhance our natural heritage through leading biodiversity research, conservation, and ecological restoration, including stewardship of campus lands, organismal biology, and preservation of natural history collections.
For years, digitizing the Cheadle Collection seemed out of reach. Now, a new scanning microscope is changing that. Hear from Dr. Jennifer Thorsch, the Cheadle Center’s first Katherine Esau Director, and Dr. Jesús Martínez-Gómez about the technology, the collection, and what comes next.
Published October 2026
Dad always said that great universities attract great faculty, who attract great students. Right before he passed away, UC Santa Barbara was admitted to the Association of American Universities. There are only 71 universities in that elite organization. That was one of his major career goals.
Bill Cheadle