Award Data

Atom Trap Trace Analysis (ATTA) has proven to be a valuable technique for detecting rare gas radioisotopes. By tuning the frequency of a laser to the resonance of a desired isotope, only atoms of that isotope are captured by a magneto-optical trap (MOT) and detected by observing its fluorescence with a CCD camera. Existing approaches rely on manually selecting a region-of-interest (ROI) of image p ...

The TARgeting Distributed Sensors for Situational Surveillance (TARDIS3) program will study the feasibility of sensor-leakage techniques to enable explosive event detection without relying on friendly human or technological assets. Specifically, we propose placing targeted advertisements through public marketplaces that request and surreptitiously exfiltrate the sensor data needed to detect and lo ...

Commercial imaging satellites capture the majority of the planet’s surface every day, generating millions of images. Searching such data for specific objects of interest is extremely difficult to do manually without automated computer image analytics. NGA is seeking a novel scientific formalism and tools for training overhead image detectors on rare and new objects of interest, for which large, ...

This work aims to push the commercialization of perovskite crystals in a direction that is useful to the warfighter.  H3D will rely on Actinia, a startup company that is bringing the perovskite inventions from Northwestern to market to provide samples of perovskite.  Actinia will grow the crystals and fabricate the contacts and H3D will do final assembly and testing of the detectors.  H3D will ...

In this SBIR project, we will develop an efficient, low-cost, rad-hard imager of ionizing radiation (focusing primarily on gamma-rays during Phase I but also expanding to fast neutrons during Phase II) that has high angular (< 2°) and energy resolution (< 2% at 662 keV) that can be handheld (< 4 kg system mass) and has a low operating bias (< 200 V) for its sensing pixel elements. Current radiati ...

Gamma dosimetry is an integral part of radiation safety and protection for a wide range of military operations. For these applications, Geiger Müller (GM) tube is used as the standard gamma dose rate sensor. The cost-to-performance metric for this sensor type has reached a plateau and new sensor materials are needed for the next generation of dosimeters. Recently there has been a vast development ...

Photonwares proposes to develop a novel large aperture and fast EO shutter capable of meeting the NGA requirements for laser-based remote sensing applications. The clear aperture can be up to 25mmx25mm while the transition time is shorter than 10ns and the repetition rate can reach over 1MHz with a high on/off contrast ratio. The design is based on our over 20 years of commercial expertise on Pock ...

Physical Sciences Inc. is proposing to develop the Network Fusion Radiation Analysis Tool (NFRAT) to address the need for an enhanced detection, localization and identification capability in support of sensitive site exploitation, perimeter monitoring and contamination avoidance operations. The NFRAT software will utilize probabilistic representations of the radiological environment and statistica ...

Radiological and nuclear incidents threaten the health and safety of US. To prepare for the occurrence of these incidents, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) evaluates both commercial and non-commercial systems expected to help Warfighters either prevent the occurrence of a radiological incident or mitigate the damage of a radiological incident that has already occurred. Existing simulator ...

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) proposes the development of a Compact Optical Fiber For Extreme Environments (COFFEE) sensor to measure fast, transient magnetic fields generated in military system components due to nuclear weapons effects (NWE) such as Internal Electromagnetic Pulse (IEMP) and System Generated EMP (SGEMP). Knowledge of these magnetic fields is important to validate models of a partic ...