The Howard Hughes Medical Institute this week named 28 recipients of its inaugural International Early Career Scientist awards. The awardees, hailing from 12 countries, will each receive $650,000 in total support over five years from HHMI, beginning next month. As The New York Times points out, seven of the 28 winners are from China. "They’re incredibly energetic, extremely smart, highly productive and accomplished,” HHMI president Robert Tjian said of the Chinese winners in an interview with the Times.
While the 28 awardees represent a wide array of scientific disciplines, most are somehow involved in molecular biology research. Two of the awardees — Pfizer-University of Granada-Junta de Andalucía Center for Genomics and Oncological Research's José García Pérez and Tsinghua University's Nieng Yan — are genomicists.