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QUANTUM APPLIED SCIENCE & RESEARCH INC

Address

16744 W BERNARDO DR
SAN DIEGO, CA, 92127-1904
USA

View website

UEI: GWGDBN4PE928

Number of Employees: 13

HUBZone Owned: No

Woman Owned: No

Socially and Economically Disadvantaged: No

SBIR/STTR Involvement

Year of first award: 1998

Phase I Awards

Phase II Awards

53.33%

Conversion Rate

$5,719,347

Phase I Dollars

$23,315,272

Phase II Dollars

$29,034,619

Total Awarded

Awards

Up to 10 of the most recent awards are being displayed. To view all of this company's awards, visit the Award Data search page.

Cognitive Health Impact and Physiological Sensors (CHIPS) Helmet, Phase II

Amount: $1,299,999 Topic: DHA233-003

Modern military aircraft are cognitively and physically taxing their human operators, presenting a critical safety risk. Sleep deprivation, long periods of intense attention, physical exertion, acute or chronic stress, strong and extended acceleration that can cause gravity-induced loss of consciousness, hypoxia, and other factors such as blasts or ballistic impacts can negatively impact mission performance and increase the risk of accidents. Although military aircraft have numerous sensors, their operators are not monitored, leaving a need for unobtrusive Operator State Monitoring (OSM) systems that can measure the physiological/cognitive state of aircrew. To address this need, Quantum Applied Science & Research, Inc. (QUASAR) is integrating physiological and Ballistic Impact Detection (BID) sensors into a Cognitive Health, Impact, and Physiological Sensor (CHIPS) helmet. The CHIPS helmet is intended to measure the vital signs of pilots as well as their cognitive functional states. In addition, the helmet will detect and measure pressure waves on the body that may result from ballistic or blast impacts. During Phase I, QUASAR developed and demonstrated a functional CHIPS prototype. In Phase II, QUASAR will advance the CHIPS system with additional sensors and software to provide interpretable outputs relating to physiological health and cognitive states.

SBIR

Phase II

2025

DOD

DHA

Cognitive Health Impact and Physiological Sensors (CHIPS) Helmet

Amount: $249,992 Topic: DHA233-003

This Phase I project addresses a pressing issue in modern military aviation, where the increasing complexity of aircraft places a heavy burden on human operators, risking safety and mission success. The U.S. ArmyÆs Future Vertical Lift program aims to introduce advanced aircraft with autonomous systems, raising concerns about operator overload and fatigue. To tackle this challenge, Quantum Applied Science and Research, Inc. (QUASAR) proposes the development of the Cognitive Health, Impact, and Physiological Sensor (CHIPS) helmet. This innovative helmet integrates nonintrusive functional near-infrared (fNIR) sensors and ballistic impact detection (BID) sensors. The fNIR sensors monitor physiological factors such as cerebral blood oxygen saturation, pulse oximetry, heart rate, and respiration rate, while the BID sensors detect impact trauma during flight. This project addresses the critical issue of operator health and safety in military aviation, which has been linked to a significant number of accidents. The CHIPS helmet provides real-time assessments of an aircrewÆs cognitive and physiological state, helping identify compromised or traumatized operators without affecting their performance. By monitoring vital signs and cognitive health, the CHIPS helmet promises to enhance mission safety and performance, ultimately contributing to the well-being of military aviators.

SBIR

Phase I

2024

DOD

DHA

Neonatal EEG MOnitor (NEMO) Phase IIb

Amount: $2,926,931 Topic: 101

Abstract Neonatal seizures occur in over 14,000 newborns annually in the US, and are frequently associated with long-term deleterious consequences including intellectual disability, epilepsy, and other neurodevelopmental disabilities. Electroencephalography (EEG) is the only reliable means of detecting seizures; however, many Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs) do not have the capability to do EEG recordings due to the lack of skilled EEG technicians to apply gel- based electrodes to delicate neonatal skin and acquire clean signals. Under NIH SBIR funding, Quantum Applied Science and Research (QUASAR), a leader in noninvasive sensor technology, in collaboration with Children’s National Hospital (CNH), a top ranked pediatric hospital, has been developing a Neonatal EEG MOnitor (“NEMO”) device intended as a reliable and easy-to-use EEG system that will increase availability of neonatal EEG monitoring to hospitals that typically lack this capability. The NEMO device takes advantage of QUASAR’s innovative dry sensing technology combined with a soft cap that is designed for minimal impact on the infants’ wellbeing and ease of use in the hospital environment. NEMO will lead to more neonates being screened and treated, and thus to shorter hospital stays and improved outcomes. Under Phase I and Phase II of this project, QUASAR and CNH have validated QUASAR’s dry electrodes for the neonatal monitoring application in a NICU environment, demonstrating their signal quality was comparable to that of wet electrodes, and built a prototype NEMO headset. The main goal of the proposed Phase IIb effort is to finalize the NEMO device, validate its performance on neonates in the NICU environment, and obtain 510(k) clearance for it. In order to accomplish this goal, QUASAR will work with ProPharma, a regulatory consultant firm, to establish current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) and finalize the NEMO device under cGMP. QUASAR will then complete Safety Testing, and in collaboration with CNH will conduct a Clinical Validation to obtain the necessary data for a 510(k) submission. The final step in the project will be a product launch in partnership with medical device manufacturers and distributors.

SBIR

Phase II

2023

HHS

NIH

A Dry Electrode for Universal Accessibility to EEG

Amount: $499,996 Topic: 103

Abstract Electroencephalography (EEG) measures the brain’s local field potential from the surface of the scalp. This method is useful for studying cognitive processes, neurological states, and medical conditions. Its relative low- cost, ease-of use, and non-invasiveness increase its utility in brain monitoring for both research and medical applications. Unfortunately, the process of acquiring EEG is often not inclusive of all research subjects. EEG typically requires scalp abrasion and application of conductive gels to create a low impedance contact between exposed skin and the electrode tips. This approach is critical to obtaining good signals and reducing artifacts; however, it creates challenges for the hair of Black or African American people. Studies have shown that tightly curled hair (Type 4) of African origin impacts the ability of EEG caps to place electrodes to measure brain activity and the hair’s low absorption of liquid can impact the conductance of the saline solutions used to conduct signal. In addition, people of African origin often select hairstyles with various braiding, locs, or weaving with synthetic hair, which can impede electrode placement and are commonly listed as exclusion criteria for research, thereby excluding people of African origin at higher rates. Furthermore, even when they do participate in collection, EEG technology unsuited to their hair type/style may lead to lower signal-to-noise ratios than on other subjects, resulting in their data being rejected from the study’s analysis, thereby creating an unintentional racial barrier to study inclusion. Quantum Applied Science and Research (QUASAR), Inc. has developed innovative dry active pinned electrodes that work through hair without the need for abrasion or gels and acquire high-quality EEG signals comparable to those from gold-standard wet electrodes. This Phase I SBIR project aims to establish the feasibility of new dry or wet electrode tip designs that address the challenges posed by Type 4 hair types and commonly associated hairstyles. New designs will be tested on phantom mannequin heads and validated on human participants. The overall outcome of this project will be novel EEG electrode designs and systems that will reduce EEG access disparity for people of African origin in medical research and healthcare applications.

SBIR

Phase I

2023

HHS

NIH

Dry Electrode Flight helmet Integrated Eeg System (DEFIES), Phase II

Amount: $1,099,994 Topic: DHA222-001

The National Commission on Military Aviation Safety determined that between 2013 and 2020, 224 lives, and 186 aircraft were lost due to military aviation mishaps amounting to losses of $11.6 billion. It is well documented that there is a negative impact on mission performance and an increased risk of accidents associated with sleep deprivation, extended time on intense attention demanding tasks, physical exertion, acute or chronic stress, strong and extended acceleration (gravity induced loss of consciousness (G-LOC)), as well as hypoxia, etc. While military crafts and planes have hundreds of sensors, their operators’ vitals and cognitive states are not often monitored. There is a dire need to monitor cognitive fatigue pilots, warfighters, and other mission critical operators, to enable real-time mitigations. Accordingly, the DoD is soliciting the development of a helmet integrated dry electrode electroencephalography (EEG) system to enable such monitoring of aircrew during flights. QUASAR’s technology has been developed under DoD funding and validated in various military relevant environments, including, simulated command center and UAV controllers, dismounted warfighters, and stationary flight simulators as well as for the study of the impacts of hypoxia on cognitive workload, the effects of age on driver performance, and the quantification of cognitive workload during ambulation. Furthermore, QUASAR’s dry electrodes have been reported to record artifact-free EEG signals when donned on board a stationary military aircraft with all systems and engines activated. QUASAR’s dry electrode EEG technology is thus ideally suited for this application, and accordingly, in response to this solicitation, QUASAR is proposing to develop a Dry Electrode Flight helmet Integrated Eeg System (DEFIES). DEFIES is a flight helmet that incorporates QUASAR’s patented hybrid capacitive and resistive dry electrode sensors and is designed to enable acquisition of high-fidelity EEG signals in flight simulators and actual flights where pilots are required to wear flight safety helmets. During Phase I, QUASAR built a first functional DEFIES prototype and drafted a product requirements document as well as a safety, regulatory, and validation plans for the Phase II prototype. In Phase II, QUASAR will revise DEFIES to meet those requirements, test for Electromagnetic Compliance (EMC) and helmet safety, as well as validate the usability of the revised prototype in a 6DOF flight simulator and a plane to bring it to a TRL6. DEFIES is well poised to first help in investigating the neurophysiological factors that underly Physiological Events (PEs) in aviation and later be a part of deployed solutions for closed-loop monitoring and mitigation of related cognitive impairments. This project could thus ultimately reduce PEs due to loss of consciousness, hypoxia, and cognitive fatigue during military flights.

SBIR

Phase II

2023

DOD

DHA

Mobile Electrocardiogram Monitor for Bottlenose Dolphins in the Marine Environment

Amount: $146,491 Topic: N212-125

As dolphins managed in professional care are living longer, diseases associated with aging are becoming more frequently encountered, including cardiac disease. One of the major challenges facing marine mammal clinicians is the lack of reliable in-water ECG recording systems, particularly while the animals are swimming unencumbered and untethered by wires. Currently, cardiac health monitoring relies on auscultation, echocardiography, and the use of modified veterinary ECG equipment originally designed for land animals. QUASAR and National Marine Mammal Foundation (NMMF) will develop a wearable dolphin ECG system that will enable increased cardiac monitoring in dolphins swimming freely in their natural marine environment. This system will leverage QUASAR’s capacitive sensors that can record ECG underwater without the need for waterproofing and have been previously demonstrated to record ECG in dolphins in an animal transport container (ATC), and recently embedded into a diving belt designed for monitoring ECG in human divers at down to 100 m depth. Future developments could benefit other marine mammals, in managed care as well as in wildlife conservation settings.

SBIR

Phase I

2022

DOD

NAVY

GO E-Stim: A Robust Cognitive Fatigue Monitoring and Mitigation Wearable

Amount: $1,499,394 Topic: AF221-D009

Fatigue is a pervasive problem during high tempo operations in many mission scenarios. The high-performance flight environment imposes unique causes of fatigue on pilots and aeromedical personnel and limits countermeasure capabilities. Currently, the DoD does not require physiological monitoring of aircrew for the purpose of identifying decrements due to fatigue. However, steady decrements in performance in laboratory settings have been demonstrated and counter fatigue measures have proven successful, such as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and noninvasive vagal nerve stimulation (nVNS). In response to this need as detailed in the Air Force’s SBIR solicitation # AF221-D009 titled “Material Advances for Aerospace Cognitive Monitoring”, Quantum Applied Science And Research (QUASAR) proposes to integrate its wearable EOG & ECG sensors and with Soterix Medical Inc. (SMI)’s vagus nerve stimulator into a single wearable headband or glasses. The project will validate the monitoring component, and also explore the possibilities of fatigue mitigation with nVNS and tDCS. To optimize robustness and wearability of the system, QUASAR is including NextFlex, a manufacturing consortium specializing in flexible electronics. The team also includes Lockheed Martin, which will serve in an advisory role for system optimization and to facilitate testing.

SBIR

Phase II

2022

DOD

USAF

Dry Electrode Flight helmet Integrated Eeg System (DEFIES)

Amount: $249,998 Topic: DHA222-001

Modern military aircraft have increased in system complexity and technical capabilities to the point that they are taxing the cognitive limits of their human operators. This presents a safety risk and can compromise mission outcomes. The DOD has implemented mitigations to reduce the incidence of Physiological Events (PE), but a recent surge in fatal military aircraft accidents is renewing the military’s dedication to curb the underlying factors. There is a negative impact on mission performance and an increased risk of accidents associated with sleep deprivation, extended time on intense attention demanding tasks, physical exertion, acute or chronic stress, strong and extended acceleration, as well as hypoxia. The high risk of human error caused by such human factors is one of the most challenging problems facing the military, creating a need to monitor cognitive fatigue in personnel to enable real-time mitigations. The Defense Health Agency is soliciting the development of a helmet integrated dry electrode electroencephalography (EEG) system to enable such monitoring of aircrew during flights, and in response, QUASAR is proposing to develop a Dry Electrode Flight helmet Integrated Eeg System (DEFIES), incorporating the company’s dry electrodes into a military flight helmet.

SBIR

Phase I

2022

DOD

DHA

Individualized, Noninvasive Speech Indicators for Tracking Elevations in Stress (INSITES)

Amount: $759,942 Topic: H12

The complexity and round-the-clock nature of NASA operations in low Earth orbit (LEO) and future cis-lunar deep space missions, along with isolation in the extremely hostile environment of space, can induce levels of acute and chronic stress that could compromise astronaut performance, leading to errors that could affect science payloads, crew safety and mission success. For the exploration of space, therefore, a method is needed to assess operator state, quickly and reliably detect stress, and provide objective feedback to the individual, crew, and ground support, in order to mitigate adverse events and mishaps. Due to the unique challenges of NASA missions, Quantum Applied Science and Research (QUASAR) proposes to develop a system to identify Individualized, Noninvasive Speech Indicators for Tracking Elevations in Stress (INSITES). The overall goal of this INSITES project is to develop an unobtrusive, objective, and reliable detector of stress that measures changes in speech and vocalizations using equipment that would be present or used (microphones, communications systems, computers) used during operations, thus not requiring additional sensors or dedicated processing hardware. QUASAR and the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) will build a database of audio stress recordings acquired under laboratory conditions in order to construct normative models of stress, using vocal stress-related features identified in Phase I. A methodology for recalibrating normative models to individuals using minimal additional training data in order to optimize model performance will be developed. QUASAR will also prepare and validate an INSITES prototype that will provide a real-time visual output describing an individualrsquo;s stress level. The prototype will be based upon an app that can be readily installed on a mobile device or implemented in NASA spacecraft and habitats to detect changes in stress acutely and over time.

SBIR

Phase II

2020

NASA

Individualized, Noninvasive Speech Indicators for Tracking Elevations in Stress (INSITES)

Amount: $124,899 Topic: H12

The complexity and round-the-clock nature of NASA operations in low Earth orbitnbsp;and future deep space missions, along with isolation in the hostile environment of space, can induce levels of acute and chronic stress that could compromise astronaut performance, leading to errors that could affect science payloads, crew safety and mission success. For the exploration of space a method is needed to assess operator state, quickly and reliably detect stress, and provide objective feedback to the individual, crew, and ground support, in order to mitigate adverse events and mishaps. We propose to develop a system that makes use of equipment that would be inherent to any spacecraft to identify Individualized, Noninvasive Speech Indicators for Tracking Elevations in Stress (INSITES). The goal of this INSITES project is to develop an unobtrusive, objective, and reliable detector of stress that measures changes in speech and vocalizations from equipment (microphones, communications systems, computers) used during operations, without requiring additional sensors or dedicated processing hardware. Under this project, Quantum Applied Science and Research (QUASAR) and the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) will define features in speech known to indicate stress, develop algorithms to extract these features from recorded audio streams, and adapt QUASARrsquo;s machine learning cognitive state classification software, QStates, to process these speech features in real-time from voice audio streams.nbsp; We will create models for stress based on these features, and provide a real-time visual output describing an individualrsquo;s stress level. The team will also develop the plans for software or hardware integration for a completed tool fornbsp;implementationnbsp;in NASA spacecraft and habitats to detect changes in stress acutely and over time. Doing so could potentially provide an opportunity to assess and intervene before it adversely impacts mission safety, effectiveness, or success.nbsp;

SBIR

Phase I

2019

NASA