Project Grant DESC0015858

This National Science Foundation (NSF) Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (CFDA 47.084) Cooperative Agreement award of $1,184,000 to Sangtera Inc. in Lexington, MA aims to develop a small form-factor precision stage to enable high-volume manufacturing of next-generation high-performance computing devices utilizing 3D stacked chiplets. The project focuses on designing, fabricating, and characterizing a prototype precision stage that can achieve 100 nm positioning precision and 1 mm motion...

This $926,538 cooperative agreement from the National Science Foundation will support the development of long-stroke micromachined arrayed cell electrostatic actuators for highly integrated micro-positioning applications by Silicon Dynamix, Inc. The award reflects the NSF's Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships program, which seeks to advance science, engineering, and innovation leading to breakthrough technologies and solutions to national challenges. Specifically, the project will utilize...

This National Science Foundation (NSF) Project Grant award under the NSF Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) provides $421,935 to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to develop an insect-scale quadrupedal robot with advanced climbing and grasping capabilities. The key objectives of this 3-year project, starting January 1, 2025, are to: (1) develop analytical models of adhesion and lubrication principles to enable inverted and vertical climbing with feedback control; and (2) demonstrate...

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $1,000,000 Cooperative Agreement under the NSF Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (CFDA 47.084) program to ZS Systems LLC to develop a novel manufacturing method for producing high-accuracy, optical encoders. The project aims to establish a pilot capability to cost-effectively manufacture encoders with over an order of magnitude finer fundamental resolution than current methods. This will enable the production of encoders critical for...

Federal Grant Award Summary Carnegie Mellon University received a $472,120 Project Grant award dated October 15, 2025, from the National Science Foundation's Division of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems under the Engineering program (CFDA 47.041). The award funds research and development of a miniaturized Sagnac gyroscope utilizing lithium tantalate on insulator (LTOI) integrated photonics technology, with performance completion targeted for September 30, 2028. The primary...

This National Science Foundation Project Grant of $157,420 awarded in October 2022 under the Engineering (47.041) program will fund research to develop new algorithms for the automated computational design of compound machines containing multiple moving parts. Specifically, the principal investigator at Georgia Tech will create topology optimization frameworks to simultaneously design internal topologies of planar domains and optimize their connectivity to form multibody mechanisms. Finite...

This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Integrative Activities program (CFDA 47.083) aims to develop 2D auxetic lattice actuators that transfer functional shape memory deformations from shape memory alloy (SMA) backbones to surrounding elastomers. The $222,890 project, awarded to the University of Southern Maine, will leverage laser micromachining to create innovative SMA geometries that enable 2D actuation for soft robotics applications. The effort will utilize...

This National Science Foundation Project Grant of $137,446 awarded to the University of Tulsa will fund the acquisition of a 7-axis robotic manipulator with force sensing capabilities to support multidisciplinary research and education from September 2022 through August 2025. The robotic arm will enable archaeological experiments replicating ancient tasks with stone and bone tools to study tool use and wear patterns, aiding the interpretation of prehistoric life. In engineering applications,...

This five-year, $454,772 project grant from the National Science Foundation's Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems will fund foundational research at The University of Akron to develop a new class of biomimetic microrobots for applications in targeted therapeutics, environmental remediation, and microscale cargo delivery. Inspired by collective animal behaviors like schooling fish and flocking birds, the microrobots will utilize off-center repulsive...

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems awarded a $449,999 Project Grant to the University of Rochester to develop a navigation-grade, chip-scale gyroscope enabled by weak value amplification. This 3-year award under the NSF Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) aims to create a highly sensitive and stable gyroscope that can meet navigation performance metrics and improve upon the state-of-the-art by 100-fold. The proposed effort will develop...