Award Data

Solid-state and biological materials interact with fluids in many important ways. Solid-state nanoparticles are formed via solution based synthesis and biological cells exist live only in a fluid environment. In Phase I, we demonstrated a method to image

A compact and efficient fuel processor that provides clean hydrogen from a high energy density liquid fuel such as butanol will allow fuel cell technology to be realized in military and commercial markets for portable applications. InnovaTek, and its proposal partner Indiana - Purdue University, will build on their combined experience in catalytic reforming to develop catalysts that are optimize ...

This proposal seeks to investigate monaural (one-microphone) speech segregation. Motivated by the observation that the human auditory system has the remarkable ability of segregating an acoustic mixture and grouping the components of the same event into a stream in a perceptual process called auditory scene analysis, the proposed approach is based on auditory scene analysis principles. The overall ...

Over 1,400 da Vinci systems are in use worldwide and the install base grows by more than 350 robots each year. While adoption has been rapid, there exists a wide variance in performance of surgical procedures, which has had a negative impact on care quality, cost and patient safety. This is due in part to inefficient training practices and limited mechanisms for objectively assessing surgical p ...

The overpotentials and inefficient electrochemical reactions are largely responsible for the lowered power density in polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) based H2/O2 fuel cells. Despite the use of large amounts of expensive precious metals (e.g. Platinum, Pt) the overall efficiency of PEM fuel cells are still about 50% only. The proposed project seeks to build on Entroplus's preliminary results o ...

The proposed research is targeted at developing revolutionary ultrafast photonic devices within the silicon system. The goals of this two-phase program include: (1) Demonstrating all-optical on-chip gain at speeds of several terahertz in a silicon-organic hybrid waveguide system. This will be a demonstration of an all-optical transistor equivalent, operating at speeds well in excess of what can ...

We propose a platform for aerial environmental monitoring based on the integration of two advanced technologies for the first time: a lightweight, flying robotic platform capable of hovering and swarming, and a compact, low-power chemical sensor platform called the Molecular Property Spectrometer (MPS): a robust, low-cost, silicon-chip-based micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) that has been use ...

ABSTRACT: State of the art Orbital Transfer Vehicle systems and GEO transfer missions require the demanding combined requirements of both high Thrust-to-Power (greater than 150 mN/kW) and high specific impulse (greater than 3000 s), all at constant power. The 9 kW PROTEAN system is a two-stage plasmoid thruster which adds secondary Neutral Entrainment (NE) to the ElectroMagnetic Plasmoid Thruster ...

ABSTRACT: The objective of this STTR proposal is to develop and demonstrate a radiation hardened organic-based solar array adaptable to nanosatellites which exhibits flexibility, variable topology, high specific power, and low cost. Organic photovoltaics (OPVs) represent a transformative technology with great potential for extremely high-throughput manufacturing at very low cost. They have the po ...

ABSTRACT: High-performance organic electro-optic (OEO) polymers can enable the development of advanced EO technologies for achieving significantly reduced energy consumption and bandwidth enhancement in future information and communication technologies. One of the most critical steps in developing successful photonic technologies is to have high quality, reproducible materials that can be availab ...