For the 11th consecutive year, the University has received funds from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute HHMI to support graduate medical education in the biological sciences. HHMI, a medical research organization whose headquarters are in Maryland, regularly makes payments to Yale and other academic institutions where its laboratories are based, in recognition of the research assistance provided by graduate students working in HHMI labs.
This year's payment amounts to $330,000. As in the past, a portion of the funds has been used to create graduate fellowships, held in 1996-97 by Jin Xie in molecular biophysics and biochemistry, Karl Hagland in microbiology, and Qiu-Xing Jiang and Leon Isales- Suarez, both in cellular & molecular physiology. The remainder is helping to provide stipends for 200 students throughout the biological sciences at Yale.
HHMI investigators are employees of the institute and also hold faculty appointments at their host institutions. Yale has one of the largest groups of HHMI investigators, and the following researchers participated in this HHMI program: Spyridon Artavanis-Tsakonas, Kim Bottomly, Axel Brunger, Peter Cresswell, Dr. Pietro De Camilli, Susan Ferro-Novick, Richard Flavell, Dr. Arthur Horwich, Reinhard Jahn, Dr. Richard Lifton, David Schatz, Dr. Paul Sigler, Joan Steitz, Thomas Steitz and Dr. Sandra Wolin.
In addition to its support of graduate education, HHMI regularly provides funds to the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale. Among other uses, the most recent Hughes funds to the library $119,000 have made it possible for faculty members, fellows and students throughout the University to access Current Contents and an expanded collection of biomedical journals via the OVID interface.