Project Grant 1549752

This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's STEM Education program (CFDA 47.076) supports the development of a STEM-focused tabletop roleplaying game for informal science learning. The $1,347,175 project will produce freely available game materials, including rules and learning-centered adventures, that target players ages 15 and older with content from biology, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, and physics. Players will acquire STEM content through gaming mechanics,...

This National Science Foundation (NSF) Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (CFDA 47.084) Project Grant of $275,000 awarded to Central Casting AI Inc. aims to develop machine learning-powered virtual characters (ML Actors) to facilitate social connections and team building for remote teams and communities in the metaverse. The project seeks to address the challenge of enabling ML Actors to navigate unpredictable user-generated virtual environments by training them on large datasets of...

This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's STEM Education program (CFDA 47.076) aims to design the blueprint and initial prototype for a gamified, personalized virtual experience to provide essential scientific research skills training to undergraduate students at the University of Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras. The $500,000 project, with a performance period from September 2024 to August 2027, seeks to increase access to guided research opportunities for underrepresented Hispanic...

This National Science Foundation (NSF) Early-Concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) award, under the Engineering program (CFDA 47.041), funds $299,861 in research led by George Mason University (GMU) to develop novel mixed reality training tools for first responders. The goal is to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) with mixed reality headsets to provide interactive, scenario-based training that simulates real-world emergency response challenges. The research team will collaborate...

This National Science Foundation (NSF) Early-Concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) Project Grant, awarded under the NSF Engineering program (CFDA 47.041), aims to develop research infrastructure to enhance human training through AI-driven task environments integrating humans with virtual scene simulations and multi-modal sensorimotor interactions. The $150,000 award to The Pennsylvania State University will fund research to: 1) establish an edge-assisted mixed-reality infrastructure...

This federal Project Grant award from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) under the National Leadership Grants (CFDA 45.312) program provides $326,495 to the University of Washington Information School to research how tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) can enhance understanding and support for youth (ages 10-15) digital civic engagement needs. The key objectives of this 2-year project (9/16/2024 - 8/31/2026) are to: 1) employ co-design methodologies to create a flexible TTRPG...

This federal Project Grant award of $426,234, provided by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) under the Child Health and Human Development Extramural Research program (CFDA 93.865), aims to refine and test a novel virtual reality (VR) parent training tool for caregivers of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who exhibit severe destructive behavior. The key products and services to be delivered include: 1) Developing a customizable, in-home VR training...

This Project Grant from the National Science Foundation will support the development of an easy-to-use virtual reality development toolkit for education. Proximal, LLC will receive $255,990 to create a user-friendly toolkit that enables educators to develop targeted, subject-specific VR educational experiences without extensive programming skills. This aligns with the goals of the NSF Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships program (CFDA 47.084) to advance solutions for national challenges...

This National Science Foundation (NSF) Early-Concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER), under the Engineering program (CFDA 47.041), provides $320,000 in funding to the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) to develop a novel extended reality (XR) system that leverages embodied cognition principles to assess attention deficit and other cognitive functions. The project aims to create immersive, interactive virtual environments where users engage in cognitively demanding tasks. The system...

This Project Grant award, funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) program (CFDA 47.070), is aimed at developing an Intelligent Extended Reality Tutoring System to accelerate skill acquisition for complex psychomotor tasks. The $515,838 project, set to be completed by June 30, 2026, will leverage extended reality (XR), artificial intelligence (AI), and Internet-of-Things (IoT) technologies to provide personalized, context-aware...