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Department Receives $1.6 Million Hughes Grant

"Computational biology is quickly becoming an essential element in many areas of biological and biomedical research, but few departments around the country have made it a major component of their curricula," says department chairman Thomas Roberts. "This award places us at the forefront of this exciting new aspect of undergraduate education in the life sciences."

FSU is among 44 research universities across the nation that together received $80 million from HHMI for their biology programs. The importance of computational mathematics to biology is enormous: it's at the heart of such scientific breakthroughs as mapping the human brain, DNA sequencing analysis, evaluating the signature patterns of genes, and developing new physiological and drug treatments for humans.

According to Biological Science professor John Elam, author of the successful proposal, the money will allow the department to hire seven teaching assistants and two new professors in computational biology. In each of the next four years, the grant will also help a dozen of the brightest undergraduates--"Hughes Fellows"--spend their senior years concentrating on computational research in preparation for their graduate studies.

"This grant should help us attract some of the best and brightest undergraduates from Florida and the nation to study biology at FSU," Dr. Elam says.

FSU is well suited to host the new computational biology program, as the home of the world's most powerful supercomputer owned by a single academic institution. FSU's School of Computational Science and Information Technology will play a major role in the success of the new program, Dr. Elam says.

Twenty-eight FSU faculty members in the Departments of Biological Science, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Chemical Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, and Statistics, all with strong mathematical and computational components in their biological research, will serve as mentors to Hughes Fellows. They will expose students to a variety of modern computational methodologies, and many Hughes Fellows will interact with more than one mentor over the one-year fellowship period. The students will conduct research throughout the fellowship year but will concentrate the bulk of it in the summer, when the Hughes stipend will replace summer-job income and allow them to spend most of their time in the laboratory. During the following two semesters, they will continue their research for Directed Individual Study credit while completing senior-year coursework. Each fellowship will also include funds for travel to a national scientific meeting.

The first Hughes Fellows in Mathematical and Computational Biology, named in January 2003, are Nicole Betty (Miami, Fla), Pamela DeTrolio (Inverness, Fla.), Mariam Gudarzi (Tallahassee, Fla.), Tung Thanh Ho (Orlando, Fla.), Mohammad Okasha (Tallahassee, Fla.), Shawn Patterson (Valparaiso, Fla.), Kathleen Phipps (St. Petersburg, Fla.), Eric Powell (Miami, Fla.), Katherine Puckett (Pensacola Fla.), Stephanie Schwinn (Tallahassee, Fla.), Aimee Signarovitz (Largo, Fla.), and Deena Westbrook (Tampa, Fla.). These young scholars will begin their Hughes fellowships with research conducted in the summer semester of 2003. (Thanks to the FSU Office of Media Relations for their contribution to this article.)

The Newsletter's New Name

Student Awards

Below: Biological Science cabinet maker Ray Faass with his daughter Josephine, winner of this year's Faculty Undergraduate Endowed Scholarship.

Graduate awards

Congratulations also to Biological Science Coordinator of Academic Support Services Joanna Carter, who completed her doctorate in the FSU College of Music this year. At least for the moment, Joanna says she has no plans to leave her present advising position.

Taimi Lynne Hoag (B.S. 1996), a Biological Science staff member in Dr. Travis's laboratory from her graduation until January of 1999, died 12 December 2002 in Petoskey, Michigan.