Federal Project Grant Award Summary

The University of Central Florida Board of Trustees received a $452,933 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Chemistry under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049), effective September 1, 2026 through August 31, 2029. This collaborative research initiative will develop an integrated data-enabled hyperspectral imaging and artificial intelligence (AI) platform for advanced materials characterization. The project delivers a unified experimental-computational-AI framework capable of analyzing highly concentrated particle suspensions in environments where conventional optical measurement methods are insufficient—including applications in environmental monitoring, advanced manufacturing, energy technologies, biomedical diagnostics, and consumer products. The dual-track hyperspectral imaging system will acquire multidimensional, polarization-resolved hyperspectral image data cubes containing spatial, spectral, and polarization information to characterize nano- and micro-particle dispersions with optical densities ranging from 3 to 100.

The project will deliver open datasets, software tools, educational modules, and peer-reviewed research publications disseminating outcomes to the scientific community. Additionally, the award will support interdisciplinary training for graduate, undergraduate, and postdoctoral researchers in optics, computation, and data science, preparing the workforce for data-intensive scientific and engineering fields. The research will advance artificial intelligence methodologies by developing physics-informed machine-learning approaches capable of extracting meaningful scientific knowledge from large, complex, and highly nonlinear datasets, transforming light interactions within dense materials from measurement obstacles into valuable sources of real-time information regarding particle size, composition, concentration, and optical properties.