An associate professor in Michigan State University's Lyman Briggs School said he is hoping he can use a grant of more than $255,000 to transform a computer program about evolution into a teaching tool to show students how the process works.

Robert Pennock will use funds he received from the National Science Foundation to create a new interface for the existing program to make it more visually stimulating and easier to understand. He is working with a team over a three-year period to develop the system.

The current program uses digital organisms - similar to computer viruses, in that they can self-replicate - to speed up the process of evolution. However, the program is too abstract to be valuable for students' understanding, so Pennock is attempting to resolve this problem. The program will initially be used for college undergraduate students, but Pennock said he hopes to eventually simplify it for high school students.