Howard Hughes is my Patron (?)

For those who don't know, Howard Hughes was an eccentric american gazillionaire, who founded the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), and subsequently bequeathed his substantial fortune to HHMI upon his demise.

HHMI currently funds huge amounts of biological and medical research, predominantly in the US.

Recently, HHMI executives decided to start offered PhD fellowships to foreign graduate students, to support them for the last 2 or 3 years of their doctoral studies. I was lucky enough to be chosen as one of the recipients of this new award.

I am pretty excited about this for a few reasons:

1) I know some of the other students who won (and a few who were turned down) for this award, and they are a pretty talented bunch, so it's an honor to be included in this group

2) I can finish my studies at Berkeley without worrying about how to pay my tuition and salary

3) Unlike most PhD fellowships (NSF, for example), this HHMI grant includes a (modest) budget
for travel to professional meetings. With the current state of Berkeley economics, I probably wouldn't get to go to many neat conferences otherwise.

4) I think this recognition will help me get grants and/or jobs in the future (although I could always be mistaken).

Anyhow, many thanks to Howard Hughes for ponying up the cash to support my studies! If you are interesting, the HHMI press release has more details about the fellowship.

Also, if you are a foreign graduate student, doing a PhD in the US in a biology-related field, definitely consider applying for next year's competition!