Award Data

The company has developed a silk-derived protein (SDP) for use as a novel ophthalmic formulation excipient that will help to treat the ocular injuries and dry eye pathology that affects over 40 million Americans annually and hundreds of millions of people worldwide. The SDP excipient is designed to enhance tear formulation comfort, longevity, and overall ocular health. This proposal builds on the ...

An understanding of terrestrial ecosystem processes requires integration and joint analysis of a large amount of heterogeneous (chemical, physical, vegetation, remote sensing, and microbiological) data from different providers. Microbiological data and analysis tools are currently separately managed and developed from other datasets, making it very challenging to fully understand terrestrial syste ...

Actionable understanding of subsurface processes is required by multiple small and medium size companies involved in environmental cleanup and subsurface energy production. Having actionable understanding means that stakeholders (1) can assess and evaluate the merits and risks of different operational strategies given certain initial conditions and (2) modify these strategies over time as a functi ...

Functional metabolic imaging of plant and microbial systems requires a sensitive, high spatial resolution microscopy method that can image metabolically important compounds in situ. This will require new chemically sensitive imaging methods to be developed. In this SBIR/STTR, we will develop a new coherent Raman-based microscopy technique that will improve ensitivity over existing stimulated Raman ...

Detailed accurate data on temperature variations and water vapor concentration distributions are needed for weather and climate forecasting. Water vapor is particularly important for predicting precipitation amounts from storms. Measurements are needed from the ground to the top of the troposphere at about 10 km altitude. Existing ground-based instruments often have measurement uncertainties due t ...

Critical security applications- the detection of WMD, strategic nuclear materials, contraband and organic/inorganic discrimination, in Seaports, Ports of Entry, air freight shipping centers, and clandestine operations, require fast, high discrimination radiation scanning systems that are compact, easily fielded, and operate low overall radiation levels. A new type of cyclotron, the compact high fi ...

Automobiles (cars and trucks for instance) are the predominant mode of transportation in the United States. These vehicles are powered by internal combustion engines that consume fossil fuels such as gasoline. Improving the efficiency of internal combustion engines is an ongoing challenge of enormous impact to energy consumption in the world. In order to improve engine efficiency and thus fuel eco ...

Rapid and sensitive remote detection of chemicals remains a challenging and currently unmet need for a wide range of monitoring and sensing applications. Remote detection is needed when it is not possible or practical to obtain samples for analysis of chemicals in a laboratory, and thus measurements must be performed without physical access to the source release point. In particular, quantitative ...

While science and technology fields greatly benefit from Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) in surface characterization, time-resolved chemical imaging on the single-molecule level, e.g., Near-Field Scanning Optical Spectroscopy and Ultrafast Tip-Enhanced Spectroscopy, lags far behind — current scanning probe microscopy only obtains information about mechanical, but not chemical/optical properties. T ...

Actionable understanding of watershed and ecosystem behavior is required for a wide spectrum of societal and engineering needs by both government entities and commercial entities. These needs include, for example, water resource management, precision agriculture and hydropower. Such actionable understanding requires the ability to numerically model various coupled processes and associated reaction ...