Award Data

Severe weather impacts our daily lives, society and nation’s economy. From an average of $10B (2005 dollars) annual loss due to tropical cyclones since 1900 to $200B in the commercial shipping industry that is threatened by severe ocean storms to the hundreds of lives and assets being lost in the $20B recreational boating industry. In these cases and many more, accurate now-casting and forecasti ...

One of the most promising biomass sources for fuels and other feedstocks is photosynthetic algae. Algae can produce lipids, proteins, and other compounds, and can be grown in salt water. Current production practices rely on expensive means of harvesting, concentrating, and extracting the algae. This makes the “bio-crude” produced by algae more expensive than petroleum. Recovering the cellular ...

This Phase II research expands Phase I research on Saccharina latissima and is to design and develop “seed” nursery methodologies for the development of commercial-scale production of juvenile kelp plants including Alaria esculenta and Laminaria digitata. The project objectives include: 1. Isolate and maintain cultures of New England species of Alaria esculenta and laminaria digitata to be use ...

Oscilla Power, Inc. (OPI) is developing a utility-scale wave energy harvester that is enabled by low cost and readily-available magnetostrictive alloys. T his device, which utilizes no moving parts, has the potential to deliver predictable quantities of electric power to coastal utilities, industrial users, and remote facilities at costs competitive with coal or gas. The Phase I project demonstra ...

ABSTRACT: A new method for manufacturing thin, flexible, portable high efficiency III-V PV modules that can be folded and rolled. In particular, IMM3J cells are lifted-off their growth substrate and transferred to a polyimide blanket sheet holding up to a few hundred cells. They are fully encapsulated. The interconnects are made with novel use of electrically conductive adhesives and polymers. Th ...

ABSTRACT: Ozone generation for decontamination systems has been around for many decades but systems, such as dielectric barrier discharge (DBD), are not suited to field use and the high voltages employed present serious safety problems. RF-driven microplasma devices are a unique technology for low-cost and low-power-voltage plasmas in vacuum and in air up to atmospheric pressure with a number of ...

ABSTRACT: The test and evaluation (T & E) mission in complex test facilities results in large amounts of data. Moreover, the data may have different characteristics, including images from particle image velocimetry data, air flow data, etc. Finally, some of the data may come from a network of similar sensors. We propose a novel, flexible, and comprehensive system for mission prioritized lossless ...

ABSTRACT: The objective of this proposal is to demonstrate the feasibility of automating the identification, processing, and storage of the most critical and pertinent data collected by a wide variety of complex sensors using a patented cloud computing methodology designed to permit the greatest flexibility and system efficiency. This novel architecture uses a revolutionary but simple idea tha ...

ABSTRACT: The purpose of the proposed Air Force Phase I STTR program is to fabricate semiconductor nanomembrane based photovoltaic (PV) power sources on flexible substrates, using Virginia Tech NanoCMOS Laboratory"s SOI silicon nanomembrane technique in combination with NanoSonic"s pioneering Polynanoguard antireflection copolymer nanocomposite materials, which afford high levels of antireflectio ...

ABSTRACT: With a cutoff at 1.6 & #956;m, high carrier mobility, and the potential to be integrated with silicon integrated circuits, Ge offers the possibility to achieve large size arrays and small pixel pitch for high sensitivity SWIR imaging near room temperatures. In addition, integrating SWIR image sensors on flexible substrates opens new applications and opportunities for night vision system ...