Award Data

In Dense Urban Environments (DUEs), a new and evolving battlefield, the ability to detect and respond quickly to multiple threats in complex environments (e.g., snipers on rooftops or in windows) is critical and is extremely important to both civilian and military tactical needs. Response latency in the critical moments after the beginning of an attack can significantly increase casualties. SWIFT ...

Behavior change is a common objective across the Defense community. Recent studies suggest that neuroimaging can improve our ability to predict what messages are effective in changing behavior in individuals and at scale (Falk & Scholz, 2018). However, current neuroscience results have not established definitive causal relationships between specific types of messages and behavior change. In BB-PRI ...

There is a lack of a non-destructive metrology tool to measure the thickness of thin films on sapphire substrates due to the transparency of the substrate. Leveraging our extensive experience building sensor systems combined with MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s expertise in theoretical modeling, we will design and build an innovative thin film measurement tool using Raman spectroscopy. Our metrology sy ...

Terrorist use of radioactive nuclear materials via nuclear and/or radiological dispersion devices (dirty bombs) is a serious threat. Therefore, it is crucial to detect proliferation of nuclear material. Critical challenges include: (a) high sensitivity detection of signature emissions from radioactive isotopes, and (b) cost-effectiveness for deployment of sensor networks across large storage facil ...

As systems become more heterogeneous and distributed, determining optimal actions for each “teammate” within the system becomes increasingly complex. A particular difficulty in guiding the actions of these teammates is the fact that they are not guaranteed to follow suggestions provided by a supervisor, especially when those suggestions are inconsistent with the teammate’s tendencies, prefer ...

As systems become more heterogeneous and distributed, determining optimal actions for each “teammate” within the system becomes increasingly complex. A particular difficulty in guiding the actions of these teammates is the fact that they are not guaranteed to follow suggestions provided by a supervisor, especially when those suggestions are inconsistent with the teammate’s tendencies, prefer ...

Building on our prior research in group discovery and tracking, we propose to develop new algorithms for predicting future behaviors of social media groups. These algorithms will be based on emerging social interaction theories and new computational models of group dynamics at multiple levels, from individual roles and interactions to aggregate trends within and across groups. Our approach takes a ...

Spero Devices is proposing the development of an analog co-processor to accelerate computation of partial differential equations (PDEs) prevalent in scientific simulation. Examples include Navier-Stokes equations for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) an...

The solution of systems of both linear and non-linear partial differential equations (PDE) is important to many scientific problems, such as magnetohydrodynamic and non-linear acoustics. Application areas include computational electromagnetics, fusion en...

The ongoing SAFARE STTR Phase II effort is focused on improving essential components for the high-energy coherently combined, fiber-based phased-array laser weapon system prototypes developed under the DARPA Excalibur program and significantly reduce system size, weight and required electrical power (SWaP). Fiber-array based laser weapons technology promises high power efficiency and reduced SWaP, ...