Project Grant 20183361028581

Cornell University was awarded a $500,000 Project Grant from the United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative competitive grants program. The four-year project aims to advance cattle genetic improvement through cryopreservation technology by studying the effects of cooling rates on ice crystal formation in embryos and developing next-generation cryopreservation methods. Specifically, the university will...

The National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) awarded Mitegen, LLC a $306,852 Project Grant under the Biomedical Research and Research Training Program (CFDA 93.859) to develop and validate cryopreservation technology that automates and optimizes cooling and warming of small biological samples like oocytes and embryos. The project aims to eliminate ice formation and reduce cooling/warming times to under 1 millisecond, improving post-thaw survival and developmental outcomes. Key...

The Agricultural Research Service, a sub-awardee of the Government of the United States, was awarded $589,250 under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) federal grant program by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The four-year project grant beginning May 1, 2022 will support the development of isochoric freezing technology to pasteurize and preserve fluid foods like milk, orange juice, apple juice, carrot juice, pomegranate juice,...

The National Science Foundation awarded $275,000 under the Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships federal grant program (CFDA 47.084) to Kazadi Enterprises LTD to develop a Hydrologic Open Cooling System. The project aims to create a renewable, closed container cooling system incorporating rechargeable vacuum insulation and a novel two-stage heat pump. The system is designed to maintain cooling chamber temperatures between 1.5-5 degrees Celsius using 10% or less of the electrical power of...

This $300,000 National Science Foundation project grant supports the development of a new sub-kelvin refrigerator using superfluid helium vortex cooling. Funded under the Engineering (47.041) program, Yale University will analyze, design, build a prototype, and benchmark a two-stage cooling system combining a superfluid vortex cooler and Joule-Thomson precooler. The system aims to achieve high-capacity cooling below 1K without using helium-3, addressing stockpile depletion issues. By...

This National Science Foundation (NSF) Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (CFDA 47.084) Project Grant award of $305,000 provides funding to Artyc PBC, a for-profit manufacturer, to develop a novel magnetocaloric cooling system for cold chain logistics. The project aims to create a reusable, refrigerant-free cooling solution that can precisely and reliably maintain refrigerated (5°C) and frozen (-20°C) conditions for temperature-sensitive goods, such as food, pharmaceuticals, and biologics,...

This $550,000 Project Grant from the US Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program will fund research at Iowa State University to improve understanding and assessment of boar sperm fertility. The university will identify biochemical differences between more and less fertile boar sperm to better understand the molecular mechanisms of fertility and infertility. Researchers will also translate sperm...

This federal Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) provides $199,867 to the University of Washington to develop an innovative approach for long-term cryopreservation of organs using ice-free vitrification and single-mode electromagnetic resonance (SMER) heating. The project aims to overcome barriers in organ cryopreservation by advancing vitrification and EM heating technologies to enable fast and uniform rewarming of cryopreserved...

This National Science Foundation (NSF) Project Grant award of $275,000 to Zealous Research LLC is part of the NSF Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (CFDA 47.084) program. The project aims to develop a single-chip microfluidic platform to automate and optimize in vitro fertilization (IVF) processes, including sperm selection, sperm capacitation, and egg fertilization. The goal is to create a user-friendly, affordable, and high-throughput platform that can increase IVF success rates and...

This two-year, $297,189 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Division of Materials Research aims to develop new approaches for ultra-low temperature refrigeration without reliance on rare helium isotopes. Specifically, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will investigate using electrically-tunable spin-orbit interactions in Rashba materials to achieve refrigeration through adiabatic electrification, with a goal of reaching temperatures as low as 0.01 K. If successful,...