Award Data

Petrophysical properties such as porosity and permeability are arguably the most important parameters in enhancing geothermal heat production through better completion design and stimulation plan. Collecting well logs are often passive and associated with additional costs. In addition, many logging packages cannot sustain high-temperature formations often observed in geothermal conditions. In thes ...

Half of the world’s population lives in urban watersheds. In order to predict how these watersheds will behave under current and future weather dynamics (e.g. if , how and where flooding would occur due to intense rainfall), we need dense measurements of river stage and river velocity. Current instruments are too expensive to deploy in the quantities needed to provide these dense measurements. A ...

There are two principal technical limitations and challenges associated with bioimaging. First, depth imaging is limited by light scattering and diffraction in biological tissue. Second, classical high flux multiphoton optical imaging causes photo-damage to cellular viability and perturbations to molecular biological processes. This renders the sample unusable for repeated in situ imaging and proh ...

Current semiconductor device simulation software adopts Fourier’s law to perform the thermal transport modeling. However, Fourier’s law will become invalid at micro/nano-scale, which can cause a large discrepancy in the thermal and electrical performance between the simulation results and the actual application. To improve the current state-of-the-art, a new semiconductor device simulation sof ...

The ability to navigate complex, dense X-ray images with occluded objects and superposition of potential threats presents a significant challenge for air cargo screeners.Explosive detection and threat interdiction is also challenging due to the varied ways threat actors conceal and disguise illicit activity.These factors work to reduce screening efficiency and throughput, as skids must be broken d ...

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project focuses on developing a universal power conversion system that addresses the unmet needs of the fast-growing electrification and energy storage industries whether it is related to electric vehicles (EV), EV charging, EV charging infrastructure, grid storage, or electric boat applications. The proposed ...

The broader/commercial impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is in creating an independent. assistive Braille learning device for blind people. The ability to read Braille is highly correlated with improved independence and quality of life. An estimated 70% of the blind are unemployed yet, of that subpopulation that is Braille literate, only 10% are unemployed. T ...

The broader impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to test an innovative new approach to generating industrially valuable microorganisms. If successful, the new approach will be demonstrated by improving the ability of an engineered bacterium to convert components of biomass into fuel. The benefit of that research will be to help develop a technology that can c ...

The broader/commercial impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project focusses on developing culturally-competent, humanlike,m and empathetic artificial intelligence (AI) agents for use within the pre-kindergarten (pre-K)-graduate school educational context. In the broadest sense, cultural competence refers to an organization's or individual's capacity and effectiveness i ...

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is connected to creating a large-scale source of low production cost, carbon-free hydrogen. This hydrogen will be produced from hydrogen sulfide (H2S). Nearly 8 million tons of H2S are processed by the energy industry each year. Sulfur recovery units (SRUs) are used to safely manage H2S. SRUs ...