Among the awardees are Peter Hoffman, an assistant professor at WSU's physics department, who was awarded $275,000 in funding from the university for his research project "Single Nanoparticle Control and Spectroscopy;" and Claudio Veranit, assistant professor in chemistry, who was awarded $100,000 for his project, "Design, Surface Deposition and Ordering Characterization of Organic and Metallorganic Molecular Electronics."