Project Grant DESC0013184

This $300,000 Project Grant awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) supports the development of a new optical microscopy technology called "Space-Time-Pulsed Engineered-Excitation for Diffraction-Free Imaging (SPEEDI)." The technology utilizes exotic space-time wave packets to enable high-resolution fluorescence imaging of deep brain tissue without the light scrambling issues of conventional microscopy. The research aims to advance imaging...

This Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Office of Integrative Activities, under the Integrative Activities program (CFDA 47.083), provides $468,564 to support the acquisition of a next-generation Near-field Scanning Optical Microscope (NeaSNom) at the University of Central Florida. The instrument, custom-built by NeaSpec, will enable simultaneous Atomic Force Microscopy and nanoscale (10 nm spatial resolution) Fourier Transform Infrared and Tip-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy. It...

This National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering (CFDA 47.041) grant award to Northeastern University for $275,000 supports the development of tunable high-speed MEMS scanners for real-time in vivo imaging and 3D depth sensing applications. The project aims to merge electrostatic levitation and ferroelectric polarization switching to create MEMS mirrors with large ranges of motion and tunable scan speeds, overcoming limitations of traditional MEMS actuators. The new microscanner technology...

This $307,754 National Science Foundation Engineering Directorate project grant will fund the acquisition of a Nikon CSU-W1-SORA super-resolution spinning disk confocal microscope for Boston University. The microscope will enable new spatially resolved transcriptomics and multi-scale connectomics research techniques to study gene expression within cells and neural connectivity in brain networks. As a shared resource housed in BU's Photonics Center, the microscope is expected to serve nine...

The University of California, San Diego (UCSD) was awarded a $587,425 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) to develop the first dual-modality super-resolution microscopy system, termed Dual-Modality Localized Plasmonic Structured Illumination Microscopy (DM-LPSIM). This new imaging technology will enable simultaneous high-speed super-resolution fluorescence and label-free scattering imaging at the 50-nanometer scale. The DM-LPSIM system...

This $275,000 federal Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems (CFDA 47.041 - Engineering) aims to create tunable high-speed scanners for endomicroscopy applications. The project will merge electrostatic levitation and ferroelectric polarization to develop MEMS micro-mirrors that can control depth-of-focus and enable real-time in vivo imaging with sub-cellular resolution. The technology will address limitations of...

This $274,786 Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) program (CFDA 47.084) will fund the development of a cutting-edge scanning magnetometer microscope by Femtosenselabs, LLC. This new microscope technology will enable high-resolution imaging of novel magnetic materials with unprecedented sensitivity at the nanoscale, supporting the advancement of spintronics and the development of...

The National Science Foundation awarded Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University a $530,376 Project Grant under the Engineering (47.041) federal grant program. The three-year award will support the development of an optical super-resolution instrument to measure concentration profiles and diffusion dynamics at thin film interfaces with unprecedented speed and resolution. Specifically, the university will develop a RESOLFT microscopy technique adapted for studying the distribution...

This $1.1 million Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Mathematical and Physical Sciences program will fund the acquisition of a magnetic-field-free atomic-resolution scanning transmission electron microscope at the University of Illinois at Chicago from September 2022 through August 2025. The microscope's novel lens design provides a magnetic-field-free sample region allowing for atomic-resolution imaging and chemical analysis of quantum materials such as magnetic,...

The National Science Foundation Division of Chemistry awarded Columbia University a $442,564 Project Grant under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences federal grant program (CFDA 47.049) to develop new microscopy techniques for imaging ultrafast chemical transformations between molecules separated by large distances. Principal Investigator Milan Delor and his research group will leverage polaritons, which are part-light part-matter particles, to significantly increase the sensitivity of optical...