The Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland, has announced grants totaling $80 million to forty-four research universities engaged in addressing the challenges of the rapidly changing and increasingly interdisciplinary field of biology.

The four-year grants, which range from $1.2 million to $2.2 million each, will support programs that encourage graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to hone their teaching skills and develop initiatives that bring emerging scientific disciplines such as genomics and computational biology into the undergraduate curriculum. The grants also will support efforts to attract minorities to science and encourage them to choose scientific careers. Programs include interdisciplinary laboratory courses in areas such as bioinformatics, proteomics, and tissue engineering, as well as new faculty, laboratory equipment, curriculum development, and student research opportunities.

"Biology is progressing so rapidly and interfacing with so many other disciplines that undergraduate teaching runs the risk of substituting quantity for quality," said HHMI president Thomas R. Cech. "Through these grants, the Institute is providing resources to help universities bring their undergraduate science teaching up to the level of their research programs."