Fueling educational reform: Bio2010–biology for the future.

Last fall the National Research Council released a report (Figure ​(Figure11 shows the report’s cover) calling for changes in undergraduate biology education. The report, Bio2010: Transforming Undergraduate Education for Future Research Biologists, is the product of an 18-month study by a committee of 11 eminent scientists (see list on p. 86). It examines ways to integrate mathematics and physical and information sciences into the education of undergraduate biology students. The study’s sponsors, the National Institutes of Health and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, asked the committee to focus on students who intend to become researchers, especially in the biomedical sciences. The report concludes that significant advances in biological knowledge could result if interdisciplinary thinking and work become second nature to researchers and that connections between biology and the other scientific disciplines need to be developed and reinforced at the undergraduate level for this to happen.