CT, United States of America

Honeybee Melittin Apitherapy for Targeted Cancer Cell Suppression and Decimation

Translational Medical Science Fourth Award

Chemotherapy continues to play an important role in treating various cancers; however, during the course of treatment it is often challenging to differentiate between cancerous and healthy t…

Magnetically Induced, Visual Detection of Trace Arsenic Contaminants in Water Using Fe3O4 Photonic Crystal Structures

Environmental Engineering First Award

Arsenic, a highly toxic metal contaminant commonly found in our drinking water, is responsible for many accidental deaths. Currently, the only visual arsenic-in-water detection system is ted…

Non-Invasive, Low-Cost Detection of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) via Smartphone Breath Analysis

Biomedical Engineering Third Award

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary disease (COPD) is expected to become the third largest killer worldwide by 2030. Current diagnosis mechanisms are time-consuming and costly, highlighting the ne…

Sinkhole Detection Using Wireless Sensor Networks and Structural Health Monitoring

Earth and Environmental Sciences Third Award

Currently, the only sinkhole detection technique is by interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR), which is both costly and inefficient. This project aims to provide more efficient sin…

Synthesis and Separation of Chiral Compounds in the Preparation of a PET Radiotracer Targeting Synaptic Vesicle Glycoprotein 2A

Chemistry Third Award

Positron emission tomography (PET) is a promising technology that utilizes radiotracers for producing detailed, 3D images of the body. The radiotracer studied in this project targets the SV2…

Testing the Effectiveness of Various Shading Materials to Mitigate Effects of Climate Change on Mock Leatherback Sea Turtle Nests

Earth and Environmental Sciences

Leatherback sea turtles are a critically endangered species in the eastern Pacific, especially due to climate change. When sand temperatures increase above 29.5 degrees Celsius, the hatchlin…

Undulated Leading-Edge Airfoils in Low to Medium Reynolds Number Regime

Engineering Mechanics Third Award

Biologically inspired airfoil designs have recently become of increasing interest to the aerospace industry for their aerodynamic versatility. One approach involves mimicking the undulating…

An Early Warning System for Zika Virus in Mosquito Populations Based on Real-Time Field Detection of Viral RNA in Mosquito Saliva

Microbiology

The Zika virus (ZIKV) epidemic is an urgent global health crisis. While RT-PCR is the gold standard for detecting ZIKV, a lengthy turnaround time (2-4 weeks) and laboratory data analysis can…

A Study of Circadian Genetics and Abiotic Stress towards Sustainable Agriculture

Plant Sciences Fourth Award

Food security and agriculturally unfavorable climates are prevalent sustainability concerns. Irrigation, a vital agricultural process, results in salinization of arable land. Saline soil dim…

Carbon Capture and Storage via Silver Nanoparticle Catalyzed Hydration of Carbon Dioxide

Environmental Engineering

To reverse the rise in atmospheric CO2 content, researchers continue to investigate ways to sequester the greenhouse gas in what is known as carbon capture and storage (CCS). In CCS, CO2 is…

Computer-Aided Bleeding Detection in Wireless Capsule Endoscopy Images Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks

Robotics and Intelligent Machines

Wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE) is a minimally invasive alternative to traditional endoscopy focusing on the small intestine; however, it is costly due to physician labor costs for manual a…

Crowd-Sourced Detection and Mapping of Nitrate Water Pollutants via a Mobile Web-Based Image Analysis System

Environmental Engineering Second Award

Countless fertilizers and plant-conditioning products utilize nitrates, which when presented into an ecosystem with surrounding bodies of water, catalyze the dangerous process of eutrophicat…

Detection of Premalignant Pancreatic Cancer via Computational Analysis of Serum Proteomic Profiles

Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Fourth Award

Pancreatic cancer (PC) is currently one of the deadliest cancers, with a 5-year survival rate of just 7%. Detecting PC while it is localized increases the survival rate to 30%, however to da…

Development of a CNT/ZnO/TiO2 Membrane for Visible-Light Induced Photocatalytic Filtration of Water-Borne Organic and Bacterial Pollutants

Environmental Engineering

With 780 million people without access to a potable water source, the development of a simple, self-powered, and point-of-use water system is desirable to remove waterborne bacteria, and che…

Formulation of a Bovine Gelatin Crosslinked Scaffold for Potential Human Tissue Applications: Cost-Effective, Patient Specific Alternative Treatment of Acetabular Labral Tears of the Hip

Biomedical Engineering Third Award

Acetabular labral tears comprise 22% of reported groin pain. Repairs involve suturing torn tissue to the bone via anchors, or removing inflamed tissue. Both prevent the body from healing nat…

Novel Low-Temperature Carbon Capture Using Aqueous Ammonia and Organic Solvents

Environmental Engineering

Current post-combustion CO2 capture technologies are energy intensive, require high temperature heat sources, and dramatically increase the cost of power generation. This work introduces a n…

Optimization of Vertically Aligned Boron Nitride Nanotube Membranes via Magnetic Arrangement in a Lyotropic Precursor for Water Transport Applications

Materials Science

Boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs) possess significant potential in water transport applications, demonstrating greater water flux over that of carbon nanotubes and contemporary reverse osmosis…

CRISPR Based Gene Editing Confers Resistance to Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)

Third Award

Current HIV therapies lead to drug resistance and fail to address the latent viral reservoir which reactivates and inevitably leads to AIDS and mortality. Commonly infectious HIV targets T-c…

Development of a Portable, Tattoo-Based Biosensor for the Non-Invasive, Low-Cost Diagnosis of Atherosclerosis via Iontophoresis of Macrophage-Targeting Silver Nanoparticles

Second Award

Atherosclerosis and subsequent cardiovascular disease causes nearly one-third of all deaths in the world. Unfortunately, atherosclerosis commonly remains asymptomatic for decades, and is pro…

Exploring Conditions for Struvite Precipitation with Sustainable Goals in Wastewater Management

Municipal and farmland effluent and CAFO produced wastes contain high phosphate and ammonium levels, which must be brought to EPA mandated standards. Current treatments are relatively expens…

Increased Charge Rate and Capacity for Olivine Li-Ion Batteries via Efficient, Upcycled Nanoscale Electrodes

Lithium-ion batteries are used as the power source for a myriad of devices, from smartphones to electric vehicles. The main issues preventing further growth and development of these batterie…

Novel Glycerol-Free Biodiesel Production using Enzyme Catalysis

Biodiesel production from vegetable oil and ethanol (EtOH) has become a demonstrated alternative energy source. Current processes convert triglycerides to biodiesel, from which 90 million po…

Polyetherketoneketone (PEKK), 3D Printed, Bipartite Surgical Implant: An Alternative and Supportive Cure for Internal Coxa Saltans in Female Adolescents

Fourth Award

Coxa Saltans, a condition of the hip, comes in three forms that manipulate a snap, but the contributing factors vary. Internal Coxa Saltans, on which this research focuses, occurs when the i…

The Optimization of Nanoparticle-Based Drug Delivery of Melittin in a Colloidal Suspension as a Selective Method to Target HIV Structural Antigen p24

Translational Medical Science First Award

The HIV-1 strand of the human immunodeficiency virus is an evasive retrovirus due to its ability to invade a cell and use the outer membrane to multiply and invade other cells. The p24 capsi…

Chocolate's Theobromine, and Not Caffeine, Significantly Reduces Sleep in Drosophila

Biomedical Engineering Second Award

Chocolate and caffeine are well-known to affect the quality of sleep. Chocolate, however,contains only minimal traces of caffeine but larger amounts of theobromine, a related alkaloid stimul…

Development of Non-toxic Photostabilized Phycoerythrin for Application in Dye Sensitized Solar Cells

Fourth Award

Phycoerythrin is a light harvesting phycobilin protein extracted from the red seaweed species Chondrus crispus. Phycoerythrin has the potential to be used as the sensitizer in dye sensitized…

Hybridized Manganese Dioxide & Gold-Iron Oxide Nanoparticle Inhibition of Tumor Growth via Radiosensitization and Tumor Microenvironment Control

While controlled bombardment of cancer cells via ionizing radiation remains the leading form of cancer treatment, its effectiveness is often limited by damage caused to neighboring healthy t…

Novel Low Grade Waste Heat Recovery System with Simultaneous Electricity Generation, Carbon Sequestration and Urea Production

First Award

Over 60% of energy generated during electricity production is discarded as low-grade waste heat. Concurrently, modern power plants are reluctant to capture and sequester flue-gas CO2, due to…

Synthesis of an Electromagnetically-Controlled Corn-Starch/PVA Biopolymer Microcube for Extended and Targeted Drug Delivery

There has been recent focus on water-soluble polymer matrices with integrated protein or starch bases to increase mechanical characteristics of extended-release drug delivery devices. Unfort…

Temperature-Independent, Portable, and Rapid Field Detection of Ebola via a Silk-Derived Lateral-Flow System

Systems Software First Award

Up to 90% of Ebola victims will die without early diagnosis and medical intervention, which can reduce fatalities by 50% and are critical to preventing future epidemics. Current detection me…