Award Data

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project develops a novel surgical closure system for closing internal incisions in endoscopy. The initial application is closing the vaginal cuff in laparoscopic hysterectomy. Sutures are typically used to close internal incisions in laparoscopic surgery. Throwing loops and tying knots are among the most difficult parts of laparoscopic procedu ...

This Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR) Phase I project will develop a "Fiber-loop Cavity Ring-down spectrometer" to address the critical need for an in situ means to measure contaminants in cryogenic liquids. Lacking a way to measure impurities in the liquid phase, cryogenic liquids makers and their users must rely upon gaseous samples from the headspace of the container or extract ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project proposes to develop innovative baby food products with optimized nutritional value. The research objective is to establish optimized processing methods through mechanics-based approaches to enhance nutrient bioavailability and palatability of underutilized leafy vegetables. The intellectual merit of this proposal is derived from our un ...

This SBIR Phase II innovation is twofold. First, advanced natural language processing techniques are used to analyze the content of websites and identify features of the text that determine processing difficulty for the individual student. After the initial evaluation of text difficulty, the system becomes adaptive and automatically updates its decision for the suitability of a website by keeping ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project objective is to evaluate the technical feasibility of a hand-held, point-of-care instrument for the detection of early-stage pressure ulcers. Pressure ulcers (PUS) are a common healthcare problem that affects approximately 2.3 million people in the US. Improvement in the objectivity of the early detection of PUs can advance PU treatmen ...

Transit Agency Information required for managing Service centers on resources and assets that need to be available to operate the transit service as designed. An opportunity exists to design an Integrated Framework providing Service delivery and Maintenance Management Information to quantify the reliability and availability of the assets. This framework will incorporate modeling of the asset inven ...

In the proposed effort, we will leverage this extensive experience and capabilities to realize a frequency agile mmW radiometer that can cover the range of DC-110 GHz and can be scaled to DC-200 GHz under Phase II. Ours is a photonic system that multiplies and up-coverts a low-frequency reference signal onto an optical carrier (laser) using EO modulation, then uses the modulation sidebands to inj ...

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project is directed towards the development of a non-ionic thickening agent for personal care products, which does not contain poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG). Reports have stated that commercially available PEG contains small levels of undesirable side products. Therefore, there is a strong need to create an efficient, "PEG-free" thickening agent. The p ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will develop Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) based acoustic emission (AE) sensors for structural health monitoring. AE is a well-established nondestructive testing technique commonly used to monitor for active fatigue cracks in metals, leaks in pressurized lines and tanks, impact damage, and matrix and fiber damage in composite ...

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will investigate the harvesting of kinetic river energy to produce electricity using a morphing structure designed to exhibit hydroelastic gallop. Most hydroelectric harvesters require damming a river to create head, while the exceptions that exist are only productive in deep, well-behaved flows. River sites that are shallow and/or turbulent ...