Award Data

The 21st century is the Age of the Network. Operators and clients of critical infrastructure networks are now vulnerable to cascading failures that they could not have seen coming. “Cascading” failure events remain a vital unsolved challenge as critical infrastructure network operators and regulators struggle to define and operationalize resilience, and measurement of interdependent network re ...

The promise of personalized medicine can be realized in part via point-of-care 3D drug printing, but only if there are reliable quality measures available. Children and seniors may need custom or easy-to-swallow doses, a need now addressed only in a limited way by ad-hoc in-pharmacy compounding. Compliance-targeted enhancements such as flavor and shape choices are particularly important for childr ...

Electronic monitoring (EM) represents a promising opportunity for fishery management of the future. Yet after nearly two decades of implementation less than 1% of the world’s fishing fleet are able to participate in these programs. Cost remains a key barrier to the implementation of these programs and the primary cost drivers are manual video review, data transmission and data storage. Our SBIR ...

Prescribed burns are a critical aspect of land management, but they require vegetation data that is hard to obtain at high resolution and on the timescale required. Our autonomous UAV collects critical fire modeling variables through subcanopy flight, enabling rapid surveys for faster and safer burn planning. In Phase I, we proved the feasibility of mapping live fuel moisture content (LFMC) with s ...

This Phase 2 Enhancement seeks to improve the quality of synthetic data to be representative of real data (using whatever criteria the algorithm deems important for detect, classify, and track of an object of interest at rest and/or in motion) and to maximize algorithm performance such that when the algorithm is introduced to real data with a real object of interest in its real environment, the al ...

The primary objective of this project is to improve awareness, safety and enjoyment for mariners in coastal and inland waters by the creation of a participatory sensor network (PSN) that facilitates sharing of marine observations with other mariners. We are adding a new degree of temporal fidelity to nautical charts and maps. The approach leverages volunteered geographic information to augment con ...

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) represent a significant problem for the Blue Economy, adversely affecting drinking water, commercial fisheries, water recreation, and tourism. Early detection of HABs is crucial in mitigating their effects. We propose to continue our development of HABSSED (Harmful Algal Bloom Surveillance by Sequencing of Environmental DNA) into the prototyping phase. The HABSSED pipel ...

Commercial buildings use 35% of the entire US energy output, and up to a third of that energy is wasted. Rapidly rising fuel costs, increasing concern about climate change, and policy directives from the Biden Administration are all driving the need for increased energy efficiency and the elimination of waste. At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically increased public awareness of t ...

Face masks and respirators are frequently deployed in critical protective applications (such as medical and construction environments) where fit testing is not routinely performed before each shift. N95 and related testing protocols effectively assess filtration efficiency for respirators that remain tightly fitted throughout activity, but since these protocols prescribe sealing the tested product ...

"Rising sea levels and king tide flooding in coastal areas across America are saturating onsite wastewater disposal systems (OSDS), resulting in the degradation of coastal ecosystems and 200,000+ illnesses annually. Many States are mandating system upgrades, with 88,000 upgrades required by 2050 in Hawaii alone. Unfortunately, existing upgrade options are unaffordable for 97% of Hawaiian homeowner ...