April 30 is the deadline for proposals for the fourth annual NanoInnovation grant, offered by PI (Physik Instrumente) LP, a maker of nanopositioning and piezo-based ultraprecision motion-control equipment for photonics, semiconductor and life-science applications. The grant program is open to US and Canadian graduate students and post-doctoral researchers at academic institutions and research labs who are pursuing research, experimentation or development enabled by PI nanopositioning equipment and technologies. The $25,000 grant is awarded in the form of equipment related to the nanopositioning requirements of their research. The NanoInnovation grant advisory board, which evaluates proposals, is comprised of Bharat Bhushan, a mechanical engineering professor at Ohio State University and director of its Nanotribology Laboratory for Information Storage and MEMS/NEMS; Martin Culpepper, associate professor of engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Erik Sanchez, an assistant professor of physics at Portland State University. The 2006 NanoInnovation grant winner was Ashley R. Carter, a physics research associate at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, for her submission, "An Ultrastable Scanning Probe Microscope." For more information, visit: www.pi-usa.us/nanoinnovat.htm