Cooperative Agreement FA87501620188

The National Science Foundation awarded a $1,000,000 cooperative agreement to Steg Ai Corporation under the Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships program (CFDA 47.084) to develop a solution for copyright protection through imperceptible watermarking of digital images and videos using photographic steganography. The key products to be delivered include strengthening the technology in robustness to image/video mutations, real-time encoding, computationally efficient decoding, and...

The National Institute of Justice awarded a $392,196 Project Grant under the Forensics Training and Technical Assistance Program (CFDA 16.044) to RTI International. The goal of this 24-month project is to develop a software platform for automating and improving the reliability of colorimetric drug testing, which is a commonly used but limited technique in forensic science. Phase 1 will involve generating test images and defining optimal analysis parameters, while Phase 2 will incorporate machine...

Refined Imaging, LLC was awarded a $200,000 cooperative agreement from the National Institute of Standards and Technology under the Science, Technology, Business and/or Education Outreach federal grant program to develop a secure, printable ink technique for cyber-tracking additive manufactured parts. The company will conduct proof of concept experiments to program 3D printers to modulate material porosity during deposition, resulting in an optically invisible patterned code that can be...

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has awarded a $175,519 Cooperative Agreement under the Measurement Science and Engineering (MSE) Research Grant Program (CFDA 11.609) to North Carolina State University (NC State). The project aims to: 1) acquire diverse image datasets for an interlaboratory study on forensic image comparisons, 2) develop a questionnaire and report format to gather information from study participants, 3) engage forensic practitioners and laypersons to...

This Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships program, CFDA 47.084, provides $549,996 to develop a high-throughput terahertz scanner for non-destructive manufacturing inspection. The University of California, Los Angeles, in partnership with federal laboratories and industry, will develop a terahertz camera utilizing plasmonic nanoantenna arrays to address limitations of conventional terahertz detectors. The camera aims to produce...

This $256,000 National Science Foundation Project Grant supports 2PI Inc. to develop a novel 3D sensor utilizing metasurface flat optics technology. Funded under the NSF Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships program (CFDA 47.084), this Phase I Small Business Innovation Research award aims to demonstrate an ultra-compact 3D sensor prototype with enhanced performance over existing solutions. Specifically, 2PI will validate a design featuring panoramic vision, improved spatial resolution, and...

This Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Computer and Information Science and Engineering program totaling $491,955 will fund research to develop a self-learning and self-evolving system for detecting altered and deceptive images and videos. The goal is to design an intelligent detector capable of assessing digital visual content integrity and automatically identifying falsified images or videos in real time to prevent their spread. The award to Vanderbilt University from...

This Project Grant award from the National Institute of Justice (CFDA 16.560 - National Institute of Justice Research, Evaluation, and Development Project Grants) provides $216,195 to Sam Houston State University to establish a comprehensive reference collection and conduct research on electrical tape forensics. The project aims to characterize 160 electrical tape samples of different colors and end-uses using analytical methods such as FTIR spectroscopy, SEM-EDS, Py-GC-MS, and DART-MS. It...

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) awarded a $289,992 Cooperative Agreement under the CHIPS Research and Development (CFDA 11.042) program to Tech-X Corporation. The purpose is for Tech-X to develop a simulation tool that accounts for manufacturing variations and imperfections to enable faster and more cost-effective development of photonic integrated circuits (PICs). Key activities include modifying Tech-X's XSIM simulation tool to model the effects of fabrication defects...

This Project Grant from the Department of the Air Force Materiel Command Research Laboratory, under the Air Force Defense Research Sciences Program (CFDA 12.800), provides $135,085 to the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (doing business as Tees) for the period of March 1, 2022 through February 28, 2024. The funding supports the acquisition of an ultrahigh-resolution microscope Raman and synchronous fluorescence system to conduct materials characterization and analysis. As the...