Award Data

As outsourced microelectronic manufacturing grows, the safety and security of U.S. consumers becomes increasingly threatened by potential counterfeit electronics. Current counterfeit inspection techniques are labor intensive, time consuming, and impractical to use by field agents located on remote sites, away from major facilities, and with limited expertise. The proposed work, Fast and Accurate D ...

C55-13a-270233The project embodies a field demonstration of a novel geothermal process via water injection into a shut- in existing well (already drilled & hydraulically fractured, and shut-in) for a short period, and then that injected water, having been heated by contacting the subsurface rock, is produced back to the surface (via the same well through which it was injected). This intermittent p ...

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 ...

C55-01b-270620Infrastructure systems such as electricity distribution and transmission grids, transportation networks, and water or oil/gas distribution pipelines are critical from an economic and national security standpoint. Expedited risk quantification of infrastructure network systems is of utmost importance for resiliency assessment against natural or man-made hazards. Currently available te ...

C53-18c-271136The lack of affordable large-scale batteries makes electric vehicles too expensive for most consumers and makes renewable energy storage financially impractical for almost everyone. Although Li-ion battery prices have fallen over the past three decades, they are threatening to rise higher as Li-ion production for electric vehicles is predicted to consume the world’s high-grade coba ...

C51-27a-271194Rare earth elements (REEs) are crucial to the production of green energy motors in wind turbines, hybrid cars, electric vehicles, and electronic devices. REEs are also widely used in defense systems, including precision-guided munitions, radar systems, avionics, night vision equipment, satellites and guided missiles. China dominates the REEs production and exports and is continuing t ...

Additional passenger fatalities and injuries can occur in rollover-type derailment accidents due to failures of glazing retention mechanisms on passenger railcars. In recent accidents, a key failure mode is shearing off the external rubber gasket that secures the glazing panes as the side of the railcar drags along the ground. Once the gasket fails, the glazing pane is pushed inside, leaving an op ...

Cyberattacks are a growing concern in every market with network-connected devices. Attacks such as ransomware, malware, spyware, spoofing, botnets, and more, can result in intellectual property theft, system downtime, reputation damage, and unfortunately loss of life. Most cyberattack detection techniques are limited in scalability and detection efficacy as the cyberattack landscape is constantly ...

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 impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is a novel and emerging method for treating a subset of heart failure patients. Despite modern medical regimen and device therapies, heart failure affects 6 million Americans and remains a leading cause of death and hospitalization in the United States. The proposed system and approach aim to ...