HHMI Funds Education Advances

With the aim of strengthening undergraduate and precollege science education in the U.S., the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) has named 13 professors as the recipients of $9 million in funding and 50 research universities as the recipients of $70 million in funding over four years.

The HHMI Professors Program “supports a small group of leading research scientists who are committed to making science more engaging to undergraduates,” according to the philanthropic biomedical research organization.

The schools that receive HHMI funding will use the grants, which range from $800,000 to $2 million, to develop research-based courses and curricula, to provide more students with vital working experience in the lab, and to improve science teaching from elementary school through college.

The HHMI professors with ties to chemistry and biochemistry are Utpal Banerjee of the University of California, Los Angeles; Catherine L. Drennan of Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Sarah C. R. Elgin of Washington University in St. Louis; Irving R. Epstein of Brandeis University; Baldomero M. Olivera of the University of Utah, Salt Lake City; Scott A. Strobel of Yale University; Graham C. Walker of MIT; and Isiah M. Warner of Louisiana State University (LSU), Baton Rouge.

The chemistry- and biochemistry-related university programs that have been awarded HHMI grants are based at California Institute of Technology; Dartmouth College; Emory University; Harvard University; Iowa State University; LSU; MIT; Northwestern University; Princeton University; the State University of New York, Stony Brook; the University of Florida; the University of Miami, in Florida; the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; the University of Oregon; Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University; and Yale.

Initiatives backed by HHMI include Strobel’s continuing program to take undergraduates to rain forests to look for useful organisms, such as microbes that produce potential antibiotics (C&EN, Nov. 10, 2008, page 46). Another project involves Virginia Tech’s effort to develop a “scieneering” minor that combines the life sciences with engineering. Students who pursue the minor will take courses in departments outside their major, participate in seminars at the interface of science and engineering, and complete a research project in a lab outside their major discipline.

HHMI’s goal in funding such education programs is to “excite students’ interest in science,” says the institute’s president, Robert Tjian. “We hope that these programs will shape the way students look at the world,” he adds, “whether those students ultimately choose to pursue a career in science or not.”