Award Data

This project creates an easy to use and unobtrusive hearing aid accessory that solves a very common problem for hearing aid users: understanding speech in noisy environments. A common problem amongst hearing aid users is trouble understanding speech while listening to a conversation in environments with competing speech babble noise and other noises such as restaurant conversations, social gatheri ...

This project develops a Virtual Reality Audio Simulator to enable the development of orientation and navigation skills for individuals who are blind. The simulator allows young adults undergoing orientation and mobility training to explore a virtual model of a realistic 3-D environment via auditory feedback. To create a fully immersive and interactive environment, the user wears headphones with he ...

This project develops a novel augmentative and alternative communications (AAC) device enabling individuals with severe motor disorders to communicate with a computer via signals emanating directly from their brain. The AAC prototype includes an email client that enables an individual to compose and send email without the use of residual motor control, using only a low-cost headset detecting brain ...

Accelerators used for nuclear-physics research require megawatts of radio-frequency energy. They currently employ vacuum-tube power amplifiers or conventional solid-state amplifiers that are inefficient and therefore consume a great deal of prime power. Many other applications including semiconductor processing, cellular-telephone base station transmitters and military communication systems simila ...

Accelerators used for nuclear-physics research require megawatts of radio-frequency energy. They currently employ vacuum-tube power amplifiers or conventional solid-state amplifiers that areinefficient and therefore consume a great deal of prime power. Many other applications including semiconductor processing, cellular-telephone base station transmitters and military communication systems similar ...

Conventional indoor environmental monitoring technologies are expensive, cumbersome to install and maintain, and do not provide the distributed granularity required to capture the necessary details for efficient energy management of commercial buildings. Developments in wireless sensor networks (WSN) provide substantial framework for monitoring and addressing indoor environments at scale. However ...

MSP is introducing in this proposal a practical approach to a family of cascade impactors capable of real-time measurement of the size-distributed mass concentration of particles in the atmosphere. Further, because of the high sensitivity of the proposed mass transducers, these impactors will also provide nearly instantaneous information about the influence of water vapor on the size distribution ...

Photocathodes with spin-polarized electron emission are used in physics research. Current photocathodes offer high polarization, but low total currents, and have limited lifetime. Research involving these polarized electrons would be more productive if a higher electron current were provided. This program seeks to increase the delivered polarized electron current from the photocathodes by adding i ...

For several decades photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) have been the main technology for sensitive and low noise detection of photons in many high energy physics experiments. However, compared to solid-state photodetectors, PMTs are bulky, fragile, expensive, and need to be shielded from high magnetic fields and high pressures, which severely limit their application for future DOE projects. Hence, th ...

The negative-electron-affinity (NEA) photocathodes which produce polarized electrons are a vital component of electron accelerators such as that at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). Future systems, such as the International Linear Collider (ILC), will require a polarized electron beam intensity at least 20 times greater than produced by strained GaAs, which is used in the current gene ...