Award Data

Traditional enterprise cyber-security methods are inadequate to address the increasing number of threats, particularly within larger and higher-performance networks. Several government and third party organizations report consistent failures within corporate and federal, state, and local government networks. A key point of failure in securing these networks is the centralized security architectu ...

Web searching has become a ubiquitous and indispensable activity for a wide spectrum of human endeavors. The success of Google and its competitors depends on extensive software and network infrastructures and costly hardware. Federated search engines, such as Science.gov, WorldWideScience.org and ScienceEducation.gov also run on powerful, albeit much smaller, server clusters that connect to divers ...

A leading risk facing the warfighter is from an improvised explosive device (IED) causing traumatic brain injury (TBI). The objective of this research is to develop mathematical tools to accurately predict stresses, strain and cavitation from blast overpressure that contribute to TBI and to develop mitigation technologies. Phase I showed that significant progress was made in establishing the appli ...

Leveraging the Phase I achievements of the Distributed Rocket Engine Testing Health Monitoring System (DiRETHMS) including its software toolsets and system building blocks, the Phase II project seeks a comprehensive prototyping of the technology. Phase II not only expands the functionality and applications of the Phase I achievements, but utilizes evolving diagnostics due to the advanced intellige ...

Our Phase II SBIR project will aim to develop a manufacturing path for a printed integrated circuit (PICs) platform based on thin film transistors (TFT) constructed using carbon nanotube (CNT) fabrics. The Phase II project will continue this development towards a complete TFT CNT printing platform via the demonstration of TFT devices and circuits such as a CNT complementary transistor pair (n- an ...

As an alternative material to aluminum-lithium, cryotanks developed from fiber reinforced composites can offer significant weight savings in applications for fuel containment of liquid oxygen and hydrogen. For composite materials to be accepted and utilized in these structures, they must be resistant to microcracking. It is the objective of this work to develop a matrix system for aerospace compos ...

We propose the detailed conceptual development of a device for analyzing key isotopic composition in surface materials without sample preparation. We will combine absorption spectroscopy with laser induced vaporization of solid samples for high-resolution isotopic measurements. An immediate focus is on Mars but our concept is also highly germane to other applications relevant to bio- and geochemic ...

Self-aware systems have three essential properties: they build empirical models of their own performance; they use those models to inform optimal plans of action; and they continually refine their models and plans based on the outcomes of their actions. Although engineers routinely build some degree of intelligence into the systems they design, an explanatory gap inevitably grows between what engi ...

Future NASA exloration, planetary and astrophysics missions will require various enhancements in multi-stage cryocoolers. These include increased efficiency, reduced vibration and reductions in overall system mass and power consumption. For the small coolers required, pulse tube and Stirling coolers offer the best opportunities. At present, the efficiency of these coolers is limited by the effecti ...

Mode Locked Lasers (MLLs), will likely be extremely useful for many military applications because of the low timing jitter ( < 100 fs), narrow pulse width ( < 50 fs), and high peak pulse intensity of MLLs. Important military applications that benefit from MLLs include high ENOB Analog to Digital converters (ADCs), encryption, LIDAR, high speed communications, and optical time domain reflectometry ...