The University of Missouri recently was awarded two highly coveted Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) awards from the Department of Defense (DoD), making MU one of only three higher education institutions in the nation to receive more than one award. The University of Washington and Massachusetts Institute of Technology also received two of the 24 MURI grants awarded this year from a pool of 295 proposals. Even more unusual is the fact that both MU awards went to the same department, chemistry, albeit for completely different projects.  Both projects involve interdisciplinary teams from multiple institutions, and both are expected to last five years.