Award Data

People with Intellectual Disabilities depend a great deal on work for their quality of life. Working in community-based jobs can make a substantial difference in income, relationships and self-esteem. An important factor in successful employment outcomes is matching individuals with jobs that are of interest to the job seeker. However, existing job interest tools are ineffective for this populatio ...

Captioning greatly facilitates participation in mainstream society for the hearing impaired. Though enabling software can help, captioning has remained a labor­intensive and time-consuming process. Commercial applications of automated speech recognition have typically focused on dictation and speech-interactive services, but little effort has been directed towards applying speech technology to th ...

The U.S. and many other industrial countries face a growing need for second language and cultural awareness training for business and industry. Reliance on English is no longer sufficient for trade in the world market, since the most important markets for American goods and services are non-English-speaking areas, especially in growing countries in Asia and the Middle East. In recent years there h ...

Students and adults with intellectual and other cognitive disabilities have a critical need for accessible technologies that can enable them to speak for themselves in all arenas of life, including academic settings, vocational settings, for leisure activities and for therapeutic purposes. There are, however, a significant number of people in the U.S. whose literacy deficits effectively prohibit o ...

Purpose: Children who do not learn foundational mathematical concepts during elementary school generally get further behind in math as their math deficiencies compound over time. Through a prior IES SBIR Fast-Track award, the project team developed a series of supplemental math games designed to provide elementary students with engaging, adaptive, and personalized or team-based learning opportunit ...

The environmental impact of wood coatings has become a pressing issue as the manufacturing of wooden products such as flooring, cabinetry, furniture and doors moves back to the United States amidst rising labor costs overseas. For 30 years, the bulk of these products have been painted in countries with lax environmental regulations, allowing the use of inexpensive but environmentally hazardous oil ...

There are approximately 7,000 flares in operation at industrial facilities across the United States. Flares are one of the largest volatile organic compounds (VOC) and air toxics emission sources. Based on a special emission inventory required by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in 2007, highly reactive VOC emissions from 28 flares located in Harris County, Texas were 1469.5 tons in a ...

SixPoint Materials will create low-cost, high-quality vertical gallium nitride (GaN) substrates using a multi-phase production approach that employs both hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE) technology and ammonothermal growth techniques to lower costs and maintain crystal quality. Substrates are thin wafers of semiconducting material needed for power devices. In its two-phase project, SixPoint Mate ...

Carbon nanotube (CNT) has been identified as the best conductive filler material in plastic composites. CNT significantly enhances the electric conductivity of composites at a low doping level (approximately 1 percent) with improved mechanical strength. The application of such advanced conductive composites will result in significant economic and environmental benefits. For example, ...

Intelligent Optical Systems, Inc. (IOS) has demonstrated the feasibility of achieving highly effective assays for organic pollutants on a continuous basis by adapting known principles of immunoassays in an innovative way. This achievement will make it possible to develop field-deployable monitoring systems to guard against the presence and effects of organic pollutants and other harmfu ...