The Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland, has announced the names of sixty-eight medical, dental, and veterinary students selected to receive year-long research fellowships.

Participants in the HHMI Medical Research Fellows Program — a $2.8 million annual initiative designed to strengthen and expand the nation's pool of physician-scientists and medically trained researchers — will spend the year conducting basic, translational, or applied biomedical research at academic or nonprofit research institutions across the country. In addition, twenty-two medical fellows will work in the laboratories of HHMI investigators, and one student will work with a researcher at the KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for Tuberculosis and HIV, an independent research institute established in Durban, South Africa.

This year, eight of the fellows will be funded by HHMI's six partner organizations — the American Gastroenterological Association, Burroughs Wellcome Fund, Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy, the Foundation Fighting Blindness, the Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation, and the Parkinson's Disease Foundation. In addition, five program alumni will serve as mentors to new fellows.

"Medical school curricula alone do not equip students with enough basic biology to find answers that promote health and combat disease," said HHMI investigator Vivian Cheung, who will mentor a fellow in her lab at the University of Michigan. "The HHMI Medical Fellows Program fills this gap and is a model for educating physicians who will be 'fluent' in basic science and therefore bridge discoveries to health."

For a complete list of fellowship recipients, visit the HHMI Web site.