Two grants and one contract for physics and chemistry research at NIU totaling $275,000 over a one-year period and $800,000 over a multi-year period were approved by the Board of Regents March 24.

Board of Regents Chancellor Roderick Groves said the grant money will be used for research on superconducting material and also blood disease research.

“This is extremely important, cutting-edge research. It is a real credit to the university. I am extremely pleased we are doing this sort of work,” he said.

One grant, “Mossbauer Studies of Advanced Superconducting Materials,” was awarded by the National Science Foundation.

The grant is $88,000 for the first year with additional funding for the next two years totaling more than $250,000, Groves’s report to the Regents stated.

The grant will support research focusing on electronic and structural properties of superconducting materials with the goal of discovering a high temperature superconducting material with reasonable magnetic characterisitcs, the report stated.

Also funded by the National Science Foundation is an $80,000 grant which will be used for long-range research. Over a multi-year period, the grant is anticipated to amount to $250,000, the report stated.

The contract approved by the Regents is more than $107,000 for the first year for research which will contribute to a better understanding of certain processes in electrophysiology.

Electrophysiology deals with the electric phenomena associated with living bodies and their functional activity.

The contract is supported by the Office of Naval Research, U.S. Department of the Navy, and will amount to nearly $300,000 over a multi-period, the report stated.