Award Data

ProtoInnovations, LLC (PI) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have formed a partnership to research, develop, and experimentally test a suite of methods for significantly improving the safety, mean travel speed, and rough-terrain access of wheeled planetary exploration rovers. We will accomplish this by developing algorithms for all-terrain adaptive locomotion. This will include a ...

Our aim in this project is to apply the state-of-the-art in science autonomy, including the PI's recent work at Carnegie Mellon in areas of automatic spectrometer targeting and spectra collection, science-guided path planning, and orbital terrain classification, to the creation of Intelligent Spectrometry for Robotic Explorers (ISRE). In our vision, ISRE will enable real-time, on-board analysis of ...

Robots need to know their location to map of their surroundings but without global positioning data they need a map to identify their surroundings and estimate their location. Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) solves these dual problems at once. SLAM does not depend on any kind of infrastructure and is thus a promising localization technology for NASA planetary missions and for many ter ...

As the power density of advanced engines increases, the need for new materials that are capable of higher operating temperatures, such as ceramic matrix composites (CMCs), is critical for turbine hot-section static and rotating components. Such advanced materials have demonstrated the promise to significantly increase the engine temperature capability relative to conventional super alloy metallic ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): As cancer is one of the leading causes of death in the United States with some sub-types remaining essentially untreatable, expansion of available drug targets will provide significant new options for the development ofmore effective antineoplastic agents. The major goal of this project is to apply a unique drug discovery strategy to cancer drug development. Th ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This project proposes to develop and evaluate a hand rehabilitation system for chronic hemiparetic stroke survivors that have lost their ability to full control their hand. Stroke is the leading cause of adult disability, and is the third leading cause of death in the United States. Stroke survivors often face a significant loss of functional motor control in ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Clostridium difficile (CD) is a bacterium causing diarrhea and other intestinal problems linked to 14,000 annual deaths in the US. CDI is an antibiotic-associated infection as well as a health-care-associated infection.Current CDI diagnosis relies on CD toxins enzyme immunoassay (EIA) together with antigen (GDH) EIA. Although stool toxin EIA is specific and rel ...

? DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): NMR is probably the most powerful and widely used analytical technique for structure determination and function elucidation of molecules of all types, but it suffers from low sensitivity, particularly for insoluble biological macromolecules. Dynamic Nuclear Polarization (DNP) with Magic Angle Spinning (MAS) has recently demonstrated S/N gains exceeding t ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The aim of this proposal is to evaluate BIO 300 as an effective therapy to prevent and/or mitigate the erectile dysfunction (ED) that is commonly observed following radiotherapy (RT) for prostate cancer. Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men in the United States. Approximately half of prostate cancer patients will undergo RT as a part of thei ...

DESCRIPTION: While HIV/AIDS can be managed with antiretroviral drugs that block viral replication, these agents do not clear the virus and require life-long drug administration with associated risks of cumulative toxicity and drug resistance. Recently, wediscovered a completely new class of compounds that interfere with the HIV-1 virulence factor, Nef. This viral protein is critical to HIV-1 repli ...