Award Data

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 ...

In this Phase 1 SBIR proposal, Vuronyx Technologies proposes to develop acetylperoxyborate (APB) powders for disinfection of Personal Protective Equipments (PPEs) so that they can be reused. APB powders are stable, active-oxygen containing compounds that release peracetic acid upon dissolution in water. As explained in this proposal, the use of a APB powder disinfectant has the following advantage ...

Ocean ecosystems are critical to the regulation of Earth’s climate and biodiversity, while also hosting a range of direct and indirect benefits to people, from being a food source to recreation. Coastal ocean systems are dynamic regions especially rich in diverse biological and geochemical interactions. However, major gaps exist in our knowledge of the primary biogeochemical processes and the fa ...

There is a dire need for technology to rapidly and accurately detect and quantify Escherichia coli serotypes 0157:H7 and K12 and Vibrio parahaemolyticus and total fecal coliforms. In Phase I we developed a novel approach to Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) for detecting human pathogens in cultured bacteria, mixtures of organisms and in oyster tissue. Our approach uses a higher energy las ...

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 ...

Physical Sciences Inc. proposes to develop and mature the Network Fusion Radiation Analysis Tool (NFRAT) to address the need for an enhanced radiation hazard mapping, localization and identification capability in support of contamination avoidance operations and sensitive site exploitation. The NFRAT software will utilize dynamic representations of the radiological environment and statistical mode ...

In the condition of a nuclear event, it is critical that warfighters and first responders are equipped with active dosimeters and dose rate meters.  These tools can be made from scintillation-based detector systems that require a high performance photodetector.  The silicon photomultiplier is a compact photodetector that would be ideal for such a detector system, yet their performance suffers fr ...

The fields of optics and photonics have long sought methods by which to do 3D nanofabrication; however, all methods to date have been lacking in material choices, speed, and possible geometries. Implosion Fabrication (ImpFab) is newly developed method for the 3D nanofabrication that is uniquely suited to address these needs and can therefore act as a platform for the future manufacturing of optica ...

Mechanical metamaterials are a class of advanced materials that use repeated three-dimensional geometric patterns to endow common materials with new, enhanced, and superior material properties. The “meta” in “metamaterials” refers to the geometric pattern, while the “material” can be a metal, polymer, ceramic, etc. Our expertise focuses on the design and production of mechanical metama ...

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 ...