New HHMI Professor Susan R. Wessler of the University of Georgia is a pioneer in the study of plant genomes' transposable elements, which reveal evolutionary history. Wessler will guide her students in computational and genetic analyses of such elements to see evolution in action. It's all the more important, she says, given that Georgia is enmeshed in controversy over the proposed teaching of "intelligent design" in schools. Scott A. Strobel, a professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale University, believes that students can best be inspired by scientific research if they are given "ownership." He has designed classes so that instead of being "minor technical players in the big science of a typical laboratory, students will be completely vested in an original project in which they have full autonomy."

In each of the professorship's 4 years, Strobel and his father, Gary, a plant pathologist at Montana State University, will lead a dozen undergraduates on a spring-break expedition to one of the world's rainforests, where they will explore the ecosystem and collect biological samples. Then, in a summer laboratory course, the students will isolate, characterize, test, and potentially even name and patent the products of those rainforest organisms.

Winston A. Anderson, a professor of biology at historically black Howard University, in Washington, D.C., is creating an ambitious research-oriented academic program to give undergraduates a "competitive edge" for entering biomedical science careers. Active researchers will mentor the students in laboratory courses on genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics. He is also planning summer exchange programs that will take undergraduates to African countries such as Ghana, Ethiopia, Mali, and Nigeria to learn about infectious tropical diseases and ethnopharmacology—the study of indigenous plants used for medicinal and other purposes.

Jasper Rine, professor of genetics and development at the University of California, Berkeley, wants to remodel introductory biology labs to "create a real interface between chemistry, math, computing, and biology." One area his students will explore is personal genetic information—often discussed in lectures as a societal issue, he says, but rarely addressed in laboratory curricula. Rine plans to have students' distinctive mitochondrial DNA sequenced commercially, whereupon they will each use computational tools to construct a "tree" of their heredity.

The 2006 Professors are successors to the original group of 20 selected in 2002 to show that productive scientists can also be committed, innovative teachers of undergraduates—a skill often undervalued at high-powered research universities. This goal was well met, says Stanford's Long, as the 2002 Professors "stimulated and transformed entire institutions, and have even facilitated new nationwide conversations on science teaching and mentoring."

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