HHMI’s Science Education Alliance is transforming the undergraduate introductory science experience at more than 150 two- and four-year institutions across the US. These same students are making discoveries that could change how scientists tackle bacterial infections and antibiotic resistance. HHMI Professor Marla Geha launched a first-of-its-kind program at Yale that provides military veterans hands-on research experience in their undergraduate years. The program will welcome a new cohort this summer. Scientists have used an experimental therapy that relies on bacteria-infecting viruses collected, in part, through HHMI’s SEA-PHAGES program to fight a Mycobacterium infection in a 15-year-old girl. Thousands of undergraduates engage in real scientific discovery through HHMI’s Science Education Alliance. A new analysis finds that they are more likely to persist in science than students who take traditional laboratory courses. Thousands of undergraduate students contribute to new study that broadens understanding of genetic diversity of bacteriophages. In the last five years, 4,800 students at 73 colleges and universities nationwide have taken HHMI’s Science Education Alliance (SEA) Phage Hunters Advancing Genomics and Evolutionary Science (PHAGES) research course.