Howard Hughes Undergraduate Program
Duke received a four-year $1.9 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) to strengthen both science education and research during undergraduate years. Duke is using the grant to support activities that encourage students to see the biological world as sets of systems to be explored by interdisciplinary groups using tools that include mathematics and statistics.
The grant builds on a 2002 HHMI grant to Duke that provided $1.8 million for bolstering undergraduate classroom and laboratory experiences in the area of genomics.
Duke will create a Hughes Vertically Integrated Partners (VIP) program to enable rising juniors and seniors to participate in 10 weeks of summer research work with interdisciplinary teams of faculty members, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students.
The research projects will use the systems approach to explore five areas: cell systems, modeling, genomics, signal processing and the evolution of complex systems.
VIP will continue and expand the current HHMI Research Fellows Program. This program, which specifically targets women and underrepresented minorities, gives students who have completed their first year at Duke the opportunity to work for eight weeks during the summer in campus research laboratories.
For more information about the Howard Hughes Grant:
