Fungal pathogens of agriculturally significant crops pose a serious threat against global food security. This is exacerbated by the limited classes of fungicides that are commercially available for the farmers and the rapid emergence of resistance against the existing fungicides. Furthermore, resistance against agricultural fungicides can poses serious threat to human health as it can […]

Underground mines generate significant volumes of crushed waste rock, called tailings, but almost half of these can be returned underground and used as value-added backfill. This research uses non-destructive sensors that monitor the backfill’s strength in real time and provides operators with information needed to safely place backfill as quickly as possible. The sensors will […]

In order to investigate proteins in their natural environment one can attach tiny reporter molecules to them that can be traced with appropriate instruments. However, these small reporter molecules may often cause strong perturbations to the functionality of the proteins, or cannot be seen due to experimental restrictions like low concentrations. Bioorthogonal chemistry aims to […]

There is massive growth in the area of smart cities (e.g. sensors in streetlights), smart cars, and “smart people” (sensors on people, e.g. wearable computing). In some cities like San Diego, there are cameras and microphones in nearly every streetlight in the downtown core area. Most cars made now have one or more cameras in […]

The liver is the largest solid organ in the body and is critical for metabolic and immune functions, however huge gaps still exist in our basic knowledge of the human liver. Due to challenges in obtaining human liver tissue and the fragility of liver specimens, little is known about the cells that make up the […]

Chemicals manufactured and used in society degrade through physical and biological processes (e.g., photolysis, biotransformation) into break-down products (e.g., metabolites). Most “parent” chemicals can breakdown relatively quickly so that they are not persistent or bioaccumulative; however, some metabolites formed during the degradation processes can persist in the environment thus requiring consideration for ecological and human […]

Amyloid cardiomyopathy is an under-recognized cause of heart failure and is caused by normal proteins in the bloodstream going bad (known as amyloid) and accumulating in the heart. This accumulation of amyloid in the heart tissue causes the wall of the heart to become rigid and ineffective at pumping blood to the rest of the […]

One challenge to industry adoption of products and services based on Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence is that their inner workings are often not discernable to human operators. When operators can’t reason about theit tools they tend to make poor decisions about how and when to rely on them. This ultimately limkitsthe effectiveness and efficiency […]

With the small qubit devices now becoming accessible across various hardware and cloud platforms, it is imperative to find useful tasks for the devices to perform. Such devices are known as NISQ – Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum – devices. In this regime of a few qubits, we expect the physical qubits to be noisy in […]

The project will consist of taking an out of the box artificial intelligence technology solution. The research will involve researching its deficiencies and improving on them by creating a proprietary solution to maximized its efficiency and ability to mimic human interaction. In this particular case, the way that IBM Watson discovery collects information from the […]

Overactive bladder (OAB) is an incurable, chronic medical condition that is characterized by symptoms of urgency, frequency, nocturia and urinary incontinence. It affects approximately 18% of adults and over 30% of the elderly population. Saphenous nerve stimulation is a novel therapy aimed at treating OAB patients. It offers an alternative to bladder medication, which can […]

Cameras are a fundamental component of modern robotic systems. As robots have become relied upon for safety-critical tasks, the need for robust sensing is apparent. Cameras have a major limitation, compared to other sensors such as LIDAR, in high-dynamic-range environments where lighting conditions rapidly change. These changes can cause visual navigation algorithms to struggle and, […]