To find the Gifted & Daring, the Institute looked specifically for candidates who demonstrated exceptional promise within 4 to 10 years of their becoming independent scientists. “These scientists are on the rapidly rising slope of their careers,” says HHMI President Thomas R. Cech. “We have every reason to believe that they will use their creativity to extend the boundaries of scientific knowledge for many years to come.”

In a competition open to approximately 200 universities, medical schools, and institutes, more than 300 such individuals were nominated.

The outcomes represent a boon not only to those selected. David A. Clayton, vice president and chief scientific officer of the Institute, says the competition allows HHMI to respond to new areas of scientific interest and emerging fields. “The scientists we identified through this competition are impossible to pigeonhole into traditional categories—and that is good news for the future of research in the life sciences,” Clayton says. “By my estimation, about 20 percent of them are drawn from the physical sciences, including chemistry and physics. And while nearly a quarter of these researchers are in the burgeoning field of neuroscience, it’s fair to say that we expect the impact of their work to be felt across the full spectrum of biological research.”

The competition for new investigators, HHMI’s first since 2000, represents a continued expansion of the Institute’s biomedical research mission. The selection of these scientists means that HHMI will invest more than $300 million in additional support for biomedical research over the next 7 years, according to Cech. (The Institute’s current annual budget for biomedical research is $416 million.) HHMI is also about to conclude the first phase of recruitment of scientists for the Janelia Farm Research Campus—HHMI’s community for collaborative, interdisciplinary research—scheduled to open in Northern Virginia in 2006.

The cadre of 43 new investigators includes scientists at five institutions that do not currently have an HHMI investigator: Weill Medical College of Cornell University, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, Missouri, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The latter three are joining the HHMI program for the first time.

HHMI grounds its research programs on the conviction that scientists of exceptional talent and imagination will make fundamental contributions of lasting scientific value and benefit to mankind when given the resources, time, and freedom to pursue challenging questions. HHMI urges its researchers to take risks, to explore unproven avenues, to embrace the unknown—even if it means uncertainty or the chance of failure.

Widely recognized for their creativity and productivity, the current group of HHMI investigators includes 10 Nobel Prize winners and more than 100 members of the National Academy of Sciences. HHMI investigators have made many key research advances—from the discovery of genes related to cystic fibrosis, obesity, high blood pressure, colon cancer, and other diseases to new insights into memory, vision, and olfaction.

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