SynBERC Deputy Director Wendell Lim is among fifty-six of the nation's most creative biomedical scientists who have recently been awarded the opportunity to tackle their most ambitious, risky research plans as Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigators. "Biology has long been something that mankind has looked at for its beauty and elegance," Lim says. "But I think we need to get beyond that to understand its underlying logic." One way to understand biology's inner workings, he says, is through the nascent field of synthetic biology, where scientists create new or precisely modified systems by cobbling together biological components. By linking these components into functional systems, this engineering approach offers a way to understand how the pieces fit together. "Biology is on the cusp of a new era," Lim says. More about Lim and HHMI ->