Award Data

Hazard assessment tools that model the transport and dispersion of Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and Explosive (CBRNE) materials through urban areas are only as good as the 3D models that inform the physics model. Maintaining accurate, up-to-date 3D models of urban areas is challenging. Even in the commercial world, urban construction and demolition may result in the models created a ...

Melanin is a largely unexplored biomolecule with a large diversity of molecular composition. It has broad electromagnetic absorbance, is capable of absorbing gamma radiation, is a strong antioxidant, and is resistant to environmental degradation. Despite many intriguing qualities, it has never been produced at industrial scales to enable innovations in materials and coatings. In response to the de ...

There is a significant need to improve the IR attenuation performance of military obscurants and advanced nanostructures could fulfill this demand. Metal flakes Physical vapor deposition (PVD) affirm that more than order of magnitude increases over current performance levels are possible if high aspect-ratio conductive flakes/discs can be effectively disseminated as an un-agglomerated aerosol clou ...

America’s infrastructure is aging, and in countless instances there is a critical need to address the degradation of structural components before disaster strikes. Two main infrastructure components are bridges and railways. MELD can fabricate or repair unweldable metals, yields wrought properties, is portable, and has significantly lower operating costs than other processes. MELD, formerly know ...

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a forefront of public health concern as the problem is especially acute among war veterans. The current treatment methods for PTSD mainly consist of antidepressant medications and psychotherapy, however, these are still not very effective considering drug use disorders and suicide. Epigenetics, in particular, DNA methylation has been known to show a signifi ...

Precision Combustion, Inc. (PCI) together with University of Michigan (UMich) proposes a system to use solar energy to convert water to ultra-high purity compressed hydrogen suitable for PEM fuel cells. We will combine UMich’s high efficiency photocatalytic water splitting approach with PCI’s integrated hydrogen separator/compressor. The proposed effort will confirm the avoidance of external e ...

The growing reliance on GPS for position, navigation, and timing (PNT) capabilities is a vulnerability as GPS can be readily compromised. We propose an artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) driven toolkit - a system of systems of interoperable components and methods that can be seamlessly used as necessary and appropriate for the tactical requirement and area in question. This suite ...

Shared Spectrum Company (SSC) and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VT) propose to develop and demonstrate an Adaptable Tactical Communications system that the reduces the complexity of operating tactical radios in contested spectrum conditions. Tactical radio systems have many parameters (frequency, modulation, routing, IP address, where to deploy, etc.) that need to be control ...

Physically uncloneable functions (PUFs) have the potential to revolutionize cybersecurity by forming the basis for next-generation secure networks and trusted computing environments. During Phase I, Potomac Research and OSU evaluated of three physically uncloneable function (PUF) designs that can be implemented on COTS FPGAs. One design based on hybrid Boolean networks (HBN-PUFs) emerged as the cl ...

This STTR Phase 1 project proposes development of a statistical relational learning framework for identification of the function of laboratory equipment from imagery. The proposed framework uses semantic reasoning to incorporate evidence from multiple classifiers and feature extractors, domain knowledge, and scene context for scene understanding and labeling. The Phase I effort will focus on imple ...