LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City, N.Y., recently received a $150,000 grant from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to help increase the number of businesses that develop products using renewable energy technology. The college's business incubator program, NY DESIGNS, will work with companies developing "green" products, to help them develop and market their products. 

The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) received a $200,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to support Black College Wire, an online news service for and about students at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). The one-year award will enable Black College Wire to continue its current operation and add new features to its Web site including audio streaming and First Amendment Watch, a student project that will monitor and report on censorship at Black colleges. The grant will also fund summer internships at Black-owned community newspapers.

The North Carolina A&T State University Center for Advanced Materials and Smart Structures (CAMSS) received a $1.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation to head an inter-institutional team under the NSF's Nanoscale Interdisciplinary Research Team initiative to support fundamental research and to catalyze synergistic science and technology. The other members of the team are from North Carolina State University, University of Florida, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Tenn.), IBM TJ Watson Research Center (New York) and Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India. 

Purdue University (Ind.) has received equipment valued at approximately $1.75 million from Pfizer Inc. that will be used to train students in contemporary drug manufacturing techniques and for research in chemistry and pharmaceuticals.

Xavier University (La.) has received a four-year, $1.3 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) to enhance its educational pathway into the biomedical sciences programs. The grant is part of the institute's $49.7 million initiative in undergraduate science education to 42 baccalaureate and master's degree institutions in 17 states and Puerto Rico.