Morgan Stefik, Hanno zur Loye, Sheryl Wiskur, and Sophya Garashchuk have each received $60,000 from the National Science Foundations Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) Grants for Exploratory Academic Research (GEAR) awards.

The goal of these awards is to encourage faculty researchers at South Carolina colleges and universities to compete effectively for research funding to support the research clusters associated with the National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Infrastructure Improvement (RII) Track 1-Award entitled Materials Assembly and Design Excellence in South Carolina.