The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has announced the 2010-11 class of HHMI-National Institutes of Health Medical Research Scholars and HHMI Medical Research Fellows. Both programs aim to strengthen and expand the pool of medically trained researchers.

Funded through a $4 million HHMI initiative, a total of 116 medical, dental, and veterinary students from forty-seven schools across the country will spend a year in a lab doing hands-on research. This year, seventy-four students from twenty-six medical schools and two veterinary schools were chosen from the largest group of applicants in the program's twenty-one year history to be HHMI Medical Research Fellows. And forty-two students from twenty-eight medical schools were selected as HHMI-NIH Research Scholars.

The fellows program makes it possible for selected students to pursue biomedical research at a laboratory anywhere in the United States except the NIH campus in Bethesda. To expand the program, HHMI has entered into partnerships with three foundations that will fund students who have specific research interests. The Burroughs Wellcome Fund will help support the first two veterinary students ever selected as fellows in the program. For the first time, the Foundation Fighting Blindness will provide support for a student conducting research on the causes of age-related macular degeneration, while HHMI will expand its partnership with the Ben and Catherine Ivy Foundation to support five HHMI-Ivy fellows who are doing research on glioma, a deadly and incurable brain cancer.

"These partnerships allow foundations to support top students doing research in their areas of interest," said William Galey, director of HHMI's graduate and medical education programs. "This is an important chance to expand the fellows program, and we hope more organizations will join us as partners."

For a complete list of scholars and fellows, visit the HHMI Web site.