The Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland, has announced the recipients of its 2016 International Student Research Fellowships.

Through the program, twenty pre-doctoral candidates from fourteen countries will each receive $43,000 a year for the next three years and be mentored by senior scientists at their respective institutions. Launched in 2011, the program provides support to international graduate students during their third, fourth, and fifth years of study in the United States — years that HHMI describes as the most critical for Ph.D. completion and which young international scholars — who are not eligible for federal fellowships, training grant support, or other governmental opportunities reserved for U.S. citizens — often find difficult to fund. HHMI's program funds the third to fifth years, by which time most students have chosen an advisor, identified a research project, and demonstrated their potential for success in the lab.

The new fellows will conduct research in a diverse range of fields, including antibiotic resistance in the gut, neuronal mechanisms of memory, RNA response to DNA damage, protein biosynthesis, regulatory code of the human genome, synaptic fusion, and gene overexpression during cancer development.

"It is important that this program not only recognize accomplished students but that it identifies those individuals who have a high potential to make innovative contributions to science in the future," said David Asai, senior director of science education at the institute. "We hope that the award will encourage the fellows to be creative and to try out new ideas that might be difficult to pursue without the HHMI fellowship."

For a complete list of this year's International Student Research Fellows, see the HHMI website.