It has been a cool summer at Colgate, but students working in biology professor Nancy Pruitt's lab were prepared with handmade hats and scarves after Pruitt introduced them to knitting.

Wendy Joo '11 and Vickie Cadestin '12 are on campus investigating whether proteins called dehydrins, produced by many plants to prevent dehydration, might also be produced in the animal kingdom, which has never been proven before.

Thanks to a prestigious $1.2 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), Colgate will be one of the few primarily undergraduate colleges or universities in the country where students can study systems biology, an important interdisciplinary field that uses complex mathematical analysis to study networks of interactions within living systems.

The grant will allow Colgate to hire a tenure-track systems biologist with a joint appointment in mathematics and biology, who will work with members of both departments to develop courses, laboratory modules, and pedagogical tools that will help students integrate the complex material associated with this rapidly expanding field.

Colgate also will introduce a new major -- in mathematical biology -- in fall 2009.