During a wide-ranging series of symposium discussions, one recurring theme was the recognition of the need for interdisciplinary connections both in science research and science curricula. HHMI Trustee Jeremy R. Knowles, dean emeritus and Amory Houghton Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Harvard University, observed that today "the intellectual landscape is seamless." As an illustration, he told of a seminar he had recently attended: "A young chemistry professor described how she had isolated a single influenza virus particle. I call that biology. She had labeled it with a fluorescent tag. I call that chemistry. She used an epifluorescence microscope. That's really physics, at least to me. She made a movie—that's engineering. With sophisticated imaging analysis. That's computer science. She was looking at five different disciplines in order to track a single influenza-virus particle entering a Chinese hamster ovary cell."

HHMI President Emeritus Purnell W. Choppin cited a specific example of the Institute's impact on science and the creation of knowledge. MORE...		Elaine Fuchs of the Rockefeller University provided an investigator's perspective. MORE...		Robert J. Lefkowitz, an HHMI investigator at Duke University since 1976, gave a humorous account of an unavoidable event in the life of an investigator, the periodic review. MORE...
HHMI investigator Eric R. Kandel, based at Columbia University, shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries regarding signal transduction in the nervous system. MORE...		Freeman A. Hrabowski III, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, made the case for increasing the presence of minorities in science. MORE...		Elias A. Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health, spoke of the urgency that needs to be placed on scientific research. MORE...

Photographs by Paul Fetters

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Reprinted from the HHMI Bulletin, December 2003, pages 28-29.
©2003 Howard Hughes Medical Institute