Award Data

Stony Creek Colors sells clean and safe natural dyes to the textile and fashion industries, allowing its customers to offer environmentally conscious premium products. Through its flagship natural indigo product, the company has developed and proven a complete agricultural supply chain to replace synthetic dyes with plant-based drop-in solutions. Innovations across the complete crop and processing ...

The phase II project is a key element in a larger project to develop value added agricultural manufacturing in rural communities. In phase 1 MBAI demonstrated feasibility of producing multiple high value co-products in a barley biorefinery.The current process uses barley to produce barley protein concentrate, BPC, with ethanol as a co-product. BPC has valuable markets as a protein ingredient in aq ...

This project team will fully develop and test AlphaBear 2, a vocabulary learning game for grade 4 to 7 students. Vocabulary is a prerequisite for academic success, as it is linked to stronger performance across academic subjects and improved reading comprehension. It is more difficult for students to participate in educational activities without understanding the key vocabulary associated with tha ...

In prior projects, including a 2015 ED/IES SBIR award, the team developed two immersive multiplayer virtual game environments. In Eco and Colony, middle school students collaboratively apply scientific practices within the virtual worlds to address challenges, such as the availability of resources and energy and maintaining clean water. With this Phase I funding, the team is developing a prototype ...

In prior research and development, the project team developed LiveSchool, an online platform to track student behavior. With this Phase I funding, the team will develop and test a prototype of an administrator dashboard. The dashboard will generate reports on individual student behavior patterns across classes and on the prevalence of behavioral issues across different teachers. The dashboard will ...

Small to medium farm/ranch development and electricity demand are a closely related phenomenon, and when combined with responsible environmental protection, renewable energy projects become an excellent means for sustainable economic growth. Renewable energy projects benefit rural communities in multiple areas by creating new employment opportunities, stimulating economic activity, reducing enviro ...

With the advent of precision agriculture, the way we farm is changing. Technologies exist to add precision to all aspects of the farm. Through "mapping the farm," precision management strategies can be implemented such as: targeted herbicide application, targeted soil management, improved yield predictions, improved management of water, and other farm resources. These practices all require informa ...

Biomass drying is a core unit operation at most biomass suppliers, aggregator depots, pellet mills, biorefineries, and bioproducts firms. The need to reduce energy consumption, minimize capital, and improve feedstock quality is driving a change in how biomass is milled and dried. A shift from energy-intensive hammermills and grinders to lower energy knife and rotary shear mills is reorganizing the ...

Diversifying and Adding Value to the Food Industry: Mealworm Powder as an IngredientThe goal of this SBIR effort is to begin diversifying the insects as a food market currently valued at $105M and growing to $1.53 billion by 2021. Currently, crickets have been the primary focus of the market, but mealworms offer a strong alternative. To become competitive in the larger protein market, the insect b ...

Biodegradable lubricants have great environmental benefits, but are generally more expensive than other lubricants. Our objective is to make an estolide lubricant in a way thatmakes the finished product more affordable. Determining the potential benefits of this new pathway will require a comparison of the cost and performance of the product to the other synthetic lubricants in the market. Process ...