UNT will expand research opportunities for undergraduates and help transfer students with a new $1.3 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. UNT was among 50 universities to receive the HHMI Precollege and Undergraduate Science Education Program grant.

A portion of the grant will be used to bring community college students to campus each summer. First-year students will learn academic success skills and research methods, and second-year students will work with UNT faculty on research projects. Also, UNT undergraduate students will participate in research such as characterization of bacterial proteins of unknown function in a new Classroom Research Laboratory as part of their biology courses.

And the grant will support juniors and seniors to work in a biology or biochemistry lab with UNT faculty and graduate students.

This is UNT’s second grant from HHMI. In 2009, the university received support from the institute’s Science Education Alliance, a program to bring laboratory research to beginning biology courses.