Award Data

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 ...

This project is relevant to USDA's Strategic Goal to, "Assist rural communities to create prosperity so they are self-sustaining, repopulating, and economically thriving" (USDA, 2014). By creating solutions for rural affordable housing, entrepreneurship, and electric utility financial sustainability, the proposed work simultaneously addresses issues that USDA supports individually through the ...

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 ...

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 ...

With this Phase I funding, the project team will develop and test a prototype of D-TECH, a system to determine students' level of academic engagement while completing computer-based learning activities and assessments. The prototype will integrate within existing third party computer-based programs (e.g., online courseware, educational games, simulations, intelligent tutors) and will consist of a ...

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 ...

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 ...

Grow Plastics has a technology that has been demonstrated to generate sandwich core structures in thermoplastic products. This efficient structure allows the generation of plastic products which are equivalent in strength to solid products, yet use 1/3 of the material. This substantial material reduction allows the production of parts that are lower environmental impact (due to source reduction) a ...