A grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute will provide an unusual educational opportunity for up to 20 first-year undergraduates this fall: the chance to find, name, and analyze a new bacterial virus. Brown is one of 12 universities selected to offer the full-year class, in which students will dig “phages” out of the dirt and study their genomes. (Providence College has been named an associate member in the program.)  Instructors will be Peter Shank, Robert Reenan, and Jason Sello. Says David Targan, associate dean of the College for science education, “There are very few opportunities for first-year students to learn laboratory and computational techniques and apply them in the process of answering real-world research questions.”