Award Data

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project seeks to build a system called CyberCollage as a cyberlearning tool to support computational thinking in STEM education at the middle school level. CyberCollage will enable the collective programming of educational games and computational science simulations through a social media approach that uniquely combines real-time synchronous ...

This SBIR Phase I project will investigate an active heat sink that is required for hybrid electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids that provide improved energy efficiency and reduced emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases. The project will validate the active heat sink concept for inverter cooling directly by engine coolant at 105 deg C or by ambient air. The broader/commercial impact of the ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project supports the development of a unique manufacturing method to produce novel shape memory polymers in complex shapes. These smart materials can "remember" and reform to a set shape upon an external stimulus. This continuous manufacturing process is vastly more efficient than the current state-of-the-art methods, enabling many low cost ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project proposes to commercialize a predictive modeling technology that automatically adapts to changing interaction patterns between providers of higher education (colleges and universities) and consumers (prospective students). Current methods produce only retrospective static models which, due to peculiarities of the higher education recru ...

This Small Business Technology Transfer Phase I project will develop a new system for fabrication and manipulation of carbon nanotube (CNT) composites. The system will use holographic optical trapping (HOT) with a spatial light modulator (SLM) and a new form of nano-controlled photo-polymerization. This tool will allow the creation of a new class of carbon-nanotube polymer composite materials wit ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project seeks to develop and demonstrate flame-resistant, polymer-composite materials based on novel benzoxazine resin chemistries. In the Phase I project, low-viscosity benzoxazine resins were synthesized and composite formulations prepared that exhibit suitable processing characteristics for use in composite manufacture, as well as good mec ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is a cost-effective, rapid approach to identify crop plant genes controlling salinity tolerance. These genes can be used to develop crop plants able to withstand saline conditions. We plan to identify salt tolerance genes by a novel method that takes advantage of insights from evolutionary biology theory. The Galapagos tomato is extrem ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to demonstrate a novel technique for producing large-diameter freestanding GaN wafers and substrates. Despite the research efforts in the last decade, affordable GaN wafers and substrates of large diameters have not been widely available commercially, which hinders commercialization of high performance GaN-based devices. This Phas ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will investigate a novel technique for growing large-diameter, high-quality ZnO single crystals. ZnO single crystal substrates are suitable for fabrication of epitaxial structures for both GaN-based and ZnO-based devices, such as light emitters and detectors, as well as for high power, high temperature and high frequency devices. The ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will demonstrate the feasibility of building networks that can adaptively adjust their cell coverage (the geographic footprint of the radio signal) to optimize performance. These adjustments may be in response to changing environmental conditions, interference, changing traffic patterns, or failures in portions of the system. The intel ...