Latest technologies from George Washington University

statLens — Closed‑Loop AI System for Hypothesis Generation and Statistical Modeling of Large Biomedical Datasets

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 08:30:53 GMT

High‑dimensional biomedical datasets such as transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and multi‑omics require complex analytical workflows that integrate domain knowledge, statistical modeling, and reproducible reasoning. Current pipelines rely heavily on manual scripting, fragmented tools, and expert statisticians to generate hypotheses, select model families, infer distributions, and validate assumptions. Large language models can summarize literature but cannot reliably produce testable hypotheses, formal statistical equations, or distribution‑aware models that incorporate user data and d...

Adaptive Storage for Additive Manufacturing Filaments

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 18:39:11 GMT

Consumer filament dryers use resistive heating and fans to circulate hot air, drying up to two spools at once. They include humidity and temperature sensors, while some offer programmable cycles based on filament type. Higher-end dryers add features like touchscreens and better build quality. However, most of the products lack IoT capabilities and real-time filament health tracking. Hybrid solutions combine storage and drying but still fall short in offering personalized drying per spool or open-source IoT integration. Research shows that no current product meets all ideal design criteria, suc...

Massively Parallel Amplitude-only Optical Processing System for Machine Learning

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 13:16:36 GMT

Machine learning has become a driving force in modern technology. However, existing technology cannot keep up with its demand, due to limitations by capacitive charging of wires, system architecture that stores and handles data, and many more. Deep learning algorithms like, Convolution Neural Networks (CNN), extracts specific features of interest, using linear mathematical operations (convolutions). These convolution layers consume majority (~80%) of the compute resources during the process of making decisions based on observations or data. Researchers at GW have developed a novel Amplitude-o...

Small Molecule Modulators of PTPN1/2 for Broad-Spectrum Solid Tumor Therapy

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 10:04:00 GMT

Solid tumors represent over 90% of adult cancers and remain notoriously difficult to treat. Current therapies, including chemotherapy, epigenetic drugs, and checkpoint inhibitors, face serious limitations: tumor genetic heterogeneity drives relapse, immunosuppressive microenvironments block immune infiltration, and resistance mechanisms undermine durable responses. Clinical success rates hover between 20–50%, leaving a critical need for therapies that both suppress tumor growth and activate anti-tumor immunity. Researchers at GW demonstrated that a class of benzotriazine derivatives (BI...

Thermal Neutron Transmutation Doped Gallium Oxide Semiconductor Material

tco@gwu.edu — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 13:19:43 GMT

Recently, Galium Nitride (GaN) has become the topic of much research in building devices which can replace Silicon (Si) power devices particularly for use in high power high voltage applications with devices like MOSFETs (Metal Oxide Semi-Conductor Field Effect Transistors) and HEMTs, (High Electron Mobility Transistors). Gallium nitride is preferred due to its high bandgap energy, a high critical breakdown electric field, and a high thermal conductivity. These device applications rely on a thick (upwards of 180 μm) layers of N+ doped GaN. And, there has been an issue with several doping me...

Staphylococcus-Specific Prodrug Platform

tco@gwu.edu — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 10:46:44 GMT

Broad-spectrum antibiotics like β-lactams remain the cornerstone of bacterial infections treatments, but their indiscriminate activity causes serious drawbacks: gut microbiome disruption, off-target toxicity, and accelerating antimicrobial resistance. With MRSA (Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and other drug-resistant Staphylococcus infections posing a global health crisis, there is an urgent need for targeted solutions. Researchers at GW have developed a novel class of Staphylococcus-specific prodrugs that remain inactive in systemic circulation and activate only inside Sta...

All-in-One Safety Trocar (Device) System for Controlled Access to Internal Body Cavities

tco@gwu.edu — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 13:53:01 GMT

Accessing internal body cavities for drainage, diagnostic sampling, or device placement is critical in thoracic, abdominal, and pelvic procedures—but current methods are complex and risky. Traditional approaches require multiple instruments and manual steps, increasing tissue trauma, procedure time, and complication rates. Even advanced trocar systems lack integrated safety features and often require separate tools for full cavity access. Researchers at The George Washington University have developed a next-generation, all-in-one trocar system designed to improve safety, efficiency, and...

Interactive Extended Reality Worlds with JSON Data Generated by Large Language Models

tco@gwu.edu — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 14:12:36 GMT

Recent LLM-XR systems mostly drive experiences by generating and compiling code on the fly. In complex scenes with thousands of artifacts and properties, models struggle to pick the right context, inflating token usage and still missing crucial constraints—like keeping cups on tables. Hallucinated or malformed scripts often fail to compile or crash at runtime, so teams add multi-pass “builder–inspector” loops that increase latency and hurt responsiveness. Other approaches stream control signals for animation, but don’t fuse deeply with XR scene graphs, sensors, or...

microCafe: Revolutionizing Genomic Analysis with Large Language Models

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 10:59:28 GMT

Analyzing metagenomic (DNA) and metatranscriptomic (RNA) sequence data is technically challenging and time-consuming. This process often necessitates assembly and mapping sequencing reads to existing databases of target genomic information; however, these databases are memory intensive and frequently limited in scope. Additionally, the mapping and assembly steps are computationally intensive, particularly when dealing with long-read data (5,000 - 20,000 base pairs). Traditional mapping approaches, developed for short-read data (75-300 base pairs), perform poorly with long-read data, and assemb...

Unlocking the Power of Device-Free Cold Plasma for Tumor Sensitization

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 07:01:12 GMT

Current cancer treatments like chemotherapy and radiation often struggle to target cancer cells without harming healthy tissue. Many tumors—especially aggressive or drug-resistant types—remain difficult to treat due to limited drug penetration, poor selectivity, and systemic toxicity. There is a pressing need for a method that can sensitize cancer cells to existing therapies while minimizing side effects and expanding treatment accessibility. Researchers at George Washington University have developed a novel system that generates Cold Atmospheric Plasma-Activated Media (CAM)&mdash...

Just-In-Time Analytics on Large File and Storage Systems

tco@gwu.edu — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 12:08:26 GMT

Traditional file systems, such as NTFS and ext3, often struggle to support complex analytics due to limited metadata and the absence of global views. Performing aggregate or top-k queries typically requires exhaustive scanning or pre-built indexes, which are time-consuming and resource-intensive. These limitations hinder efficient data management and analysis, especially when dealing with large-scale or unfamiliar file systems. GW researchers have developed a novel just-in-time sampling-based system that enables efficient and accurate analytics over large file systems without prior knowledge ...

A method for approximate searching very large files using Pigeonhole Principle

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 09:41:46 GMT

Big Data is the new term for the exponential growth of data in the Internet and traditional methods for searching large datasets with fuzzy criteria often rely on brute-force techniques, which can be inefficient and time-consuming. These approaches typically involve sequentially scanning through data, leading to performance bottlenecks, especially as data volumes grow. While approximate matching methods like FuzzyFind offer some improvements, they may still fall short in scalability and speed when dealing with extensive datasets. GW researchers have developed a novel system and method t...

Blood Biomarker Diagnostic Kit for Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome (CHS)

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 06:39:33 GMT

Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome (CHS) is a condition that causes repeated, severe vomiting in some people who use cannabis regularly. It’s becoming more common, but doctors often struggle to diagnose it because its symptoms mimic other illnesses. Today, CHS is diagnosed by ruling out other causes—often leading to delays and unnecessary treatments. To overcome this unmet need, researchers at The George Washington University have developed the first blood-based diagnostic test for CHS. This innovative test identifies unique immune and genetic patterns found only in CHS...

Integrated nano-cavity plasmon laser light-sources

tco@gwu.edu — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 13:01:59 GMT

Modern integrated circuits often need on-chip light sources for optical interconnects, but traditional off-chip lasers suffer from drawbacks such as large footprint, high energy consumption, slower modulation speeds, and inefficient coupling losses to on-chip waveguides. Existing approaches rely on III-V semiconductor lasers that are either separately packaged or bonded onto silicon, which complicates manufacturing and integration. These systems struggle with scalability, compatibility with CMOS processes, and excessive parasitics, limiting their effectiveness in high-bandwidth, power-sensitiv...

A Resilient, Adaptive, Multi-Context Switching, Energy-Efficient Spintronic FPGA (RAMSES-FPGA)

tco@gwu.edu — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 13:07:18 GMT

Static random-access memories (SRAM) based FPGAs are susceptible to Single Event Upsets (SEUs). SEUs are transient faults caused by high-energy particles striking the semiconductor material which result in unintended changes in the stored data. This vulnerability is a significant concern specifically in environments with high levels of radiation, such as outer space or near nuclear reactors, where particle interference is more probable. GW researchers have developed a novel SEU-hardened multi-context spintronic FPGA architecture. By integrating Magnetic Tunnel Junction (MTJ) technology as a n...

ESSRA: An Efficient Spintronic Stochastic Reconfigurable Architecture

tco@gwu.edu — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 12:59:08 GMT

Recent research in Stochastic Computing (SC) is focused on practical methods for bitstream generation, optimizing logic operations for stochastic data, and developing architectures that natively support SC. This approach has proven particularly promising in simplifying and accelerating complex computations in fields such as AI and image processing. However, conventional hardware platforms, such as FPGAs and microprocessors, do not efficiently support SC's bitwise operations and stochastic processing requirements. GW Researchers have developed a novel field programmable architecture that s...

Self-Healing Hardware for Perception Stage Faults in Autonomous Driving Systems

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 12:29:17 GMT

Autonomous Driving Systems (ADS) are safety-critical applications designed to enhance vehicle autonomy and general road safety. Perception, a critical stage of the pipeline, detects and classifies objects and environmental conditions. This stage is also highly susceptible to faults such as transient and permanent bit flips, which compromise the entire ADS pipeline. Conventional Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR) and Error Correcting Code (ECC) solutions have well-known limitations in satisfying strict ADS requirements. TMR primarily masks the faults by redundancy but does not include error correc...

Bioresorbable Cardiovascular Instruments and Methods

tco@gwu.edu — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 12:22:33 GMT

Implantable permanent pacemakers are essential for treating bradyarrhythmias and AV block, while temporary pacing systems support patients with short-term needs, such as post-surgical bradycardia or as a bridge to permanent therapy. Temporary pacing systems include an external generator with one or two transcutaneous pacing leads. This hardware, however, carries significant risks of complications like infection from biofilm formation, accidental dislodgement, and potential myocardial injury during removal due to fibrotic tissue adherence. These circumstances create a unique need for an alterna...

A transient, closed-loop network of wireless, body-integrated devices for autonomous electrotherapy

tco@gwu.edu — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 12:02:47 GMT

Living systems maintain balance through complex physiological feedback loops. Engineering solutions like cardiac pacemakers mimic this closed-loop control to autonomously regulate vital parameters. However, existing platforms have key limitations that follow from their reliance on conventional electronic hardware, monitoring schemes and interfaces to the body. These include risks of infection from physical tethers and access points, restricted patient mobility from external modules, and the need for invasive surgeries to replace components like batteries and leads. Such drawbacks not only hind...

Avatar-Based Neurological Examination System

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 09:29:26 GMT

Accurate and consistent neurological assessments remain challenging in both clinical and telehealth settings due to variability in examiner expertise, time constraints, and limited access to specialists. This is especially problematic for conditions like myasthenia gravis, where subtle motor symptoms—such as ptosis, diplopia, and muscle fatigue—are critical for diagnosis but often missed or inconsistently evaluated. To address these limitations, researchers at The George Washington University and Care Constitution have developed an AI-powered virtual avatar system that autonomousl...

GuideGuard: A Safety Innovation to Prevent Guidewire Retention

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 11:01:58 GMT

Guidewire retention is preventable yet serious complication in procedures such as central venous catheterization, with over 2,500 cases reported annually in the U.S. These incidents often require surgical retrieval and are associated with a 20% mortality rate. Guidewire retention typically occurs due to a lapse in procedural vigilance—often when the operator becomes distracted or assumes the guidewire has been removed. In high-pressure environments like emergency or critical care, clinicians may inadvertently advance the guidewire entirely into the body while threading catheters or other...

Telehealth Neurologic Disease Diagnostic Tool

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 09:56:25 GMT

Accurate diagnosis of neuromuscular conditions like myasthenia gravis remains a challenge in telemedicine. Clinicians often rely on video feeds that fail to capture subtle but critical symptoms such as ptosis (eyelid droop) and diplopia (double vision) leading to delayed or inaccurate assessments. To overcome these limitations, researchers at The George Washington University have developed a novel AI-powered diagnostic platform that enhances virtual neurological exams. The system provides real-time analysis, quantitative analysis of ocular mu...

AI-Driven Cyber-Physical System for Enhanced Telehealth Neurological Assessment

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 09:35:48 GMT

Traditional telehealth platforms struggle to deliver high-quality neurological assessments, particularly for patients with cognitive impairments, neuromuscular disorders, or mobility challenges. These gaps limit clinicians’ ability to detect subtle physical and behavioral cues critical for timely accurate diagnosis. To address this need, researchers at The George Washington University and Care Constitution Corp. have developed a cyber-physical system that transforms telehealth sessions into sensor-enhanced diagnostic encounters. The platform combines AI, computer vision, and multimodal ...

Next generation high-rejection, fouling-resistant reverse osmosis membranes

tco@gwu.edu — Fri, 30 May 2025 11:25:12 GMT

Thin-film composite polyamide membranes are the basis for modern commercial reverse osmosis (RO) membranes. These membranes are created through interfacial polymerization (IP) involving a trifunctional acid chloride (e.g., trimesoyl chloride, TMC, dissolved in an organic solvent) and a difunctional amine (e.g., m-phenylenediamine, MPD, dissolved in water). While these membranes excel in water permeability and salt rejection, their high surface roughness and uneven distribution of polar groups contribute to scaling/fouling of the membrane and make structure-property relationships difficult to a...

Robot-Aided System And Method For Diagnosis Of Autism Spectrum Disorder

tco@gwu.edu — Fri, 30 May 2025 11:24:39 GMT

Sensory abnormalities are reported to be central to autistic experience. The symptoms include hyposensitivity, hypersensitivity, multichannel receptivity, processing difficulties and sensory overload. Given the intensive and cumbersome nature of current methods of diagnosis, there is a need of behavior-based approach to identify the children at risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Children with autism often like technology and robots. So, using robots can help them connect better with others and improve their social and emotional skills. GW researchers have developed a novel system that u...

Precision Microfluidic Coating for Next-Gen Contact Lenses

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 06 May 2025 13:06:19 GMT

Contact lens discomfort (CLD) is a common problem, with up to half of contact lens wearers experiencing CLD with some frequency or magnitude. Studies have reported that between 12% and 51% of lens wearers “drop out” of contact lens wear, with CLD being the primary reason for discontinuation. Despite ongoing advancements, current coating methods such as soaking, dip-coating, and spraying—often result in uneven coverage, high material waste, and poor compatibility with sensitive compounds. These limitations hinder the development of lenses with integrated therapeutic or sensing...

A Novel Selective HDAC11 Inhibitor with Broad Anti-Cancer Efficacy

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 13:46:29 GMT

HDAC11 is a Histone Deacetylase (HDAC) enzyme. However, HDAC11 has a high defatty-acylase activity while its deacetylation activity is virtually nonexistent, which is linked to poor prognosis in multiple cancers. This suggests that inhibition of HDAC11 can be used to treat cancers by modulating protein function. No potent and selective inhibitors for the defatty-acylase activity of HDAC11 exist, as previously available HDAC11-selective inhibitors show limited or no ability to prevent this activity in cell cultures. Researchers at GW developed TD047, a novel selective inhibitor of HDAC11, whic...

Revolutionizing Microalgae Harvesting Through Fluid Dynamics

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 09:22:50 GMT

Microalgae have enormous potential for producing biofuels as they are aquatic organisms that require low energy inputs and can be grown in non-arable lands using high-salinity and wastewater streams. Microalgae are also well-known sources of proteins and lipids and are of high value to the food and pharmaceutical industries. Conventional harvesting methods (centrifugation, filtration, sedimentation, and flocculation), face efficiency, cost, and sustainability challenges. Although centrifugation and filtration achieve high recovery rates, they demand significant energy inputs and high operation...

Solar Hybrid Dryer for Drying, Biochar, Lumber, Coffee, Cocoa and Agricultural Products

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 13:43:36 GMT

Researchers at The George Washington University have developed an innovative solar hybrid dryer for drying biochar, lumber, coffee, cocoa and agricultural products. In particular, the invention relates to a kiln for drying wood, wood products, and agricultural products. The new drying technology will significantly decrease the amount of time spent on drying and dependence on weather. Every year, lumber producers spend millions of dollars on energy to heat wood drying kilns. Hybrid kilns would improve fuel efficiency and deliver cost savings, thereby helping the forestry industry cut energy co...

Novel heterodyne radiometers designed to detect environmental emissions

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 11:24:56 GMT

In today’s developing world, climate change is impacting heavily on humanity by altering global weather patterns, increasing severity of storms, and more. For example, the extraction and refining of fossil fuels produces excess methane and its global warming potential is 25 times that of CO2. Therefore, the need exist for flare remote sensing methods to detect global warming gases emission that are better than current methods like satellite monitoring, ground-mounted thermal imagers, and stack-mounted chemical sensors. Researchers at GW are developing two laser heterodyne radiometers. T...

Method for reducing errors in neural networks

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 10:17:48 GMT

In today’s AI revolution, Neuromorphic computing has become a vital part of artificial intelligence. However, existing technologies like memristor, though widely used to compute and store data, face complex non-idealities such as inconsistency in performance from one switching cycle to the next, variation in behavior between individual devices, and tuning failure where the resistance state remains stuck at a certain level. These non-idealities cause deviations in the outputs of the underlying vector-matrix multiplications due to which the memristive neural networks may not achieve desire...

Transformative Nanoparticle-Based Therapy for HIV

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 08:01:21 GMT

HIV/AIDS remains a persistent global epidemic, affecting thousands of new individuals annually. A critical challenge in HIV treatment is the virus's ability to lie dormant in infected T cells, evading immune responses and existing antiretroviral therapies (ART). This latent HIV can reactivate unpredictably, leading to viral rebound and disease progression. Dr. Rohan Fernandes, a professor at George Washington University, has pioneered an innovative solution using Prussian Blue nanoparticles (PBNPs) functionalized with latency-reversing agents (LRAs) and broadly neutralizing antibodies. Th...

3D Printed Biomimetic Blood Vessels

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 10 Dec 2024 06:55:20 GMT

Efforts to develop small-diameter blood vessel grafts for biomedical use have faced significant challenges due to the limited availability of vascular autografts and artificial alternatives. Traditional materials like polylactic acid (PLA), commonly used in 3D printing, lack the required flexibility and porosity to support efficient blood flow and nutrient exchange. Researchers at George Washington University have pioneered a new method to address this gap. They print the outer layer of the blood vessel using a rubber-like elastomer and then remove the polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) component, cre...

AIBP-Driven Lipid Raft Modification: A Novel Approach for HIV Treatment

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 10 Dec 2024 06:30:17 GMT

COVID-19 and HIV remain significant global health challenges, with millions of people affected worldwide. Despite the availability of treatments, both viruses continue to spread, and neither has a definitive cure. A key issue lies in the viruses’ ability to exploit host cellular mechanisms, such as lipid rafts—specialized regions in cell membranes crucial for viral replication and transmission. Additionally, these mechanisms contribute to inflammation and other co-morbidities, exacerbating disease severity and complicating treatment efforts. Dr. Michael Bukrinsky, a professor at G...

Prussian Blue Nanoparticles for Targeting Cancer Cells

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 10 Dec 2024 02:39:31 GMT

Immune checkpoint inhibitors have shown promise in cancer treatment by helping the immune system recognize and attack cancer cells. However, many tumors remain resistant to these treatments. To address this challenge, Dr. Rohan Fernandes, a professor at George Washington University, developed a novel patented technology by combining Prussian Blue Nanoparticles (PBNPs) with known stimulatory CD137 antibodies to target immune cells that are resistant to immune therapy. CD137 is a TNF-receptor on T Cells, dendritic cells, and NK cells that possesses the potential to upregulate anti-tumor response...

Engineered Immune Cells for Targeted Tumor Infiltration and Enhanced CAR-T cell Therapy

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 08:02:33 GMT

CAR-T cell therapy has emerged as a promising cancer treatment, leveraging patient’s own T cells that are genetically modifying to express a Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR). These receptors enable T cells to recognize and attack antigens on the surface of cancerous cells more effectively. While highly effective against certain cancers, solid tumors often resist this therapy due to the dense extracellular matrices (ECMs) and basement membranes (BMs) that shields them from immune cell infiltration. To overcome this barrier, researchers at GW in collaboration with scientist at ...

Genetic Biomarkers for Prostate Cancer Diagnosis and Prognosis

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 11:29:09 GMT

Prostate cancer remains a significant health concern, particularly among African American men who experience higher incidence of prostate cancer as well as more aggressive forms of the disease. The identification of reliable biomarkers is crucial for early detection, assessing the risk of developing the disease, determining its aggressiveness, and predicting survival rates. However, currently used biomarkers and prognostic tools, such as prostate specific antigen (PSA) levels, may not predict cancer risk or prognosis effectively in all ethnicities. Thus, more clinically relevant genetic biomar...

HDAC6i-Activated Macrophage Cell Therapy

tco@gwu.edu — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 13:45:10 GMT

The tumor microenvironment (TME) plays a key role in tumor growth and survival. Often the immunosuppressive nature of the TME prevents success of treatments including immune checkpoint blockade (ICB), radiation therapy (RT), and chemotherapy. Macrophages in the TME contribute to its immunosuppressive or immunostimulatory character. M2 macrophages secrete anti-inflammatory cytokines, such as transforming growth factor (TGFβ) and interleukin (IL-10), associated with cancer, angiogenesis, tumor invasion, and migration. On the contrary, M1 macrophages secrete pro-inflammatory cytokines such a...

STAT-Activated Macrophages for Targeted Cancer Immunotherapy

tco@gwu.edu — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 13:40:08 GMT

Macrophages play a critical role in both innate and adaptive immunity, essential for maintaining tissue homeostasis and combating infections. In the context of cancer, macrophages can differentiate into two main phenotypes: M1 macrophages, which exhibit anti-tumor properties, and M2 macrophages, which support tumor progression and contribute to anti-inflammatory responses. The ratio of M1 to M2 macrophages within the tumor microenvironment (TME) is vital for anti-tumor immunity, presenting a significant target for new cancer therapies. Researchers at George Washington University (GW) have dev...

Process design to build an environmentally Engineered Coal char plant to manufacture fertilizer, absorbent and pellets

tco@gwu.edu — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 13:40:10 GMT

The present technology relates to improved processes for preparing modified lignite by reacting raw lignite with a source of magnesium (Mg2+) ions and a source of calcium (Ca2+) ions, washing the modified lignite (e.g., with water), drying, and pyrolyzing the treated lignite, and to the use of such products for phosphorous remediation. Through this process, GWU researchers have found that locally abundant raw lignite (RL) may be converted into a chemically and thermally modified lignite (CTL) by reacting (e.g., via a surface deposition treatment) with Mg2+ (e.g., using MgSCU, MgO, Mg(OH)...

Novel probe velocimeter to measure liquid flow

tco@gwu.edu — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 11:17:31 GMT

In modern times, expert experimentalists have to rely on complex and expensive laser velocimeters to calculate the liquid flow at the wall. Such techniques include molecular tagging velocimetry, particle tracking velocimetry, particle image velocimetry, etc. It would be beneficial for many practical and industrial applications to have a system that can be mounted on a surface boundary and measure local streamlines, near-wall velocity, and wall shear stress. GW researchers have developed a wall-mounted device to measure near-wall velocimetry. It is an optical-based approach where all the optic...

System for Fleet Coordination and Control of Manned and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

tco@gwu.edu — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 19:24:56 GMT

Land-based delivery systems are reaching their limits with the growing demand for product delivery. This is owing to the increased road network demand and difficulty finding delivery drivers. The best alternative for this supply chain problem is a remotely piloted aircraft system(RPAS) to deliver the packages. The RPAS systems have certain limitations, such as physical constraints limiting battery weight, range of the routes, government regulation and geographical locations. Still, they can be a robust and reliable substitute if the systems are optimized. Researchers at George Washington Univ...

A novel noninvasive nondestructive means to measure viscosity of biomaterials for biomedical applications

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 12:35:15 GMT

Hydrogels are pivotal in the realm of biomedical applications making them ideal for tissue engineering, drug delivery, and wound healing. Traditional methods for assessing the viscoelastic properties of hydrogels, such as shear rheology and compression testing, while standard, present several drawbacks. These include sensitivity to experimental conditions, limitations with hydrogels that cannot withstand high shear rates or temperatures, and the destructive nature of some tests, which can preclude repeated measurements on the same sample. Researchers at George Washington University have devel...

MEPicides: Novel DXR Inhibitors for Drug-Resistant Malaria and Tuberculosis

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 09:57:16 GMT

Malaria and tuberculosis, caused by Plasmodium spp. and Mycobacterium tuberculosis respectively, continue to pose global health challenges with an estimated 429,000 deaths annually. While efforts have been underway to develop drugs targeting the causative agents behind these diseases, the rise of drug resistance strains of these pathogens has limited effective therapies and continues to challenge those that do currently work. Plasmodium and M. tuberculosis rely on isoprenoid biosynthesis through the methylerythritol phosphate (MEP) pathway (as shown in Figure 1A) for survival — a pathway...

A Versatile Accelerator Design for Multiple Deep Neural Network Applications

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 09:34:35 GMT

Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) have become integral to numerous applications, from image recognition to video processing, touching almost every aspect of modern life. The expansion of DNN applications has led to increasing demands on underlying hardware architectures, particularly in terms of memory bandwidth and communication requirements. Despite numerous advancements, existing DNN accelerators, often characterized by their rigid Network-on-Chips (NoCs) and centralized buffer designs, struggle to efficiently support the simultaneous execution of multiple applications, leading to suboptimal perf...

Quit4Baby and Text2Quit: Transforming Smoking Cessation with Text-Based Support

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 07 Oct 2024 06:40:25 GMT

In the U.S., 20% of deaths are the result of smoking. Quitting smoking is difficult, and as many as 17 million Americans try to quit each year with less than an 8% success rate. Text-based cessation programs have been shown to nearly double abstinence rates in large randomized trials, comparable to other methods like Quitline counseling. Quit4Baby, specifically designed to target pregnant women seeking help to quit smoking, and Text2Quit both developed by GW Prevention and Community Health professor Dr. Lorien Abroms, are copyright-protected text-based-technologies that send up to 300 personal...

Transparent Conductive Oxide-based Mach-Zehnder Modulator in Silicon Photonics

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 12:26:36 GMT

Transparent conductive oxides (TCO) like Indium tin oxide (ITO) are extensively adopted in high-tech industry such as in touchscreen displays of smartphones or contacts for solar cells. Until recently, ITO has been explored for electro-optic modulation using its free-carrier dispersive effect. Electro-optic modulators largely determine the transmission rate and are an important part of photonic communication systems. Thus, gigahertz (GHz)-fast modulation capability using ITO must be demonstrated. GW researchers have developed a novel Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI)-based modulator to ...

Photonic Tensor Core Matrix Vector Multiplier

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 12:20:42 GMT

High-computation speed is a need of an hour in today’s artificial intelligence era. In existing general-purpose processors, matrix operations occur serially, while requiring continuous access to the cache memory, thus creating the “von Neumann bottleneck” problem. The revolutionizing impact of Neural Networks (NNs) have contributed to development of emerging technologies, ranging from free space diffractive optics to Nano photonic processors that aim to improve the computational efficiency of specific tasks performed by NNs. Researchers at GW have invented a Photonic Tensor ...

Strain-Engineered Integrated MoTe2 Photodetector for High Responsivity

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 12:14:54 GMT

Photodetectors are important part for photonic circuitry, which converts photons to electric signal. The ability of a photonic device to convert light energy to electrical energy depends on the band gap of the photoconductive material, which dictates how efficiently the material can absorb depending on the frequency of the light energy. Existing photoconductive materials are inefficient at absorbing light energy and converting that light energy to an electrical signal because they have a large band gap—generally between 1 and 3 electronvolts (eV). Therefore, there is a need for photonic ...

Optical Digital to Analog Converter

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 12:07:58 GMT

Digital-to-analog converters are indispensable functional units in signal transmission and also an essential part of the optical computing. In previous systems, the conversion of a digital electronic signal to an analog optical signal has been achieved by first converting the digital electronic signal to an analog electronic signal and then converting the analog electronic signal to an optical analog signal with an electro-optic modulator. This approach has a drawback which requires summing in electronics where it is difficult to achieve linear sums at high speed with varying voltage or curren...

Low Loss Multistate Photonic Memories

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 11:47:16 GMT

High-computation speed is a need of an hour in today’s artificial intelligence era. An energy efficient and high-speed photonic memory device to transmit information in Photonic Integrate Circuits (PICs) will have great advantage in computing speeds. The photonic memories consists of an optical input, multiple configurations for reading and writing multi-bit words. Researchers at GW have developed a non-volatile photonic memory device based on the phase-change material (PCM) with broadband transparencies used to store quantized information with negligible losses in the ‘0’ s...

Two-dimensional material printer and transfer system and method for atomically layered materials

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 11:42:17 GMT

Clean, fast, and accurate transfer of 2D materials, are a critical technology in production of all devices that need 2D materials on top of it. Existing technologies are inefficient in accurately placing a 2D material without cross contamination or mechanical damage to neighboring devices on chip. Thus, a precise and contamination free approach of placement of 2D-materials is needed. Researchers at GW have developed a novel transfer method for 2D materials utilizing a micro-stamping technique to significantly reduce the lateral cross-contamination area on the substrate receiving the 2...

Customizable Emergency Airway Organizer

tco@gwu.edu — Wed, 04 Sep 2024 12:42:26 GMT

Intubation is a vital medical procedure for patients with respiratory issues, such as COVID-19 and acute respiratory distress. Yet, this life-saving procedure often presents considerable challenges, including failed initial attempts, "difficult intubation" scenarios, and the critical need for a sterile environment. These issues lead to extended hospital stays and increased healthcare costs. To address these issues, healthcare providers need tools that can streamline intubation procedures and improve patient outcomes. The emergency airway organizer, developed by a team of biomedical...

Dual Manifold Thermoelectric Heat Exchanger

tco@gwu.edu — Wed, 04 Sep 2024 08:24:17 GMT

Heat exchangers are crucial components in numerous industrial applications, including energy systems, automotive cooling, and electronic device thermal management. Traditional heat exchangers often utilize simple geometries such as tubes or plates which can limit their thermal performance and efficiency with challenges like limited heat transfer surface area, inefficient fluid dynamics. Researchers at George Washington University have addressed these limitations by proposing an innovative design for a thermoelectric heat exchanger using additive manufacturing techniques to create a dual-manifo...

Small molecule inhibitor of ARID4B to combat endocrine therapy resistance in breast cancer

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 13:17:26 GMT

Large-scale genomic analyses, including data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and other breast cancer datasets, have identified amplification of the AT-rich interactive domain 4B (ARID4B) protein, also known as retinoblastoma binding protein 1-like 1 (RBP1L1), in approximately 22% of human breast cancer cases. Compelling clinical evidence highlights the critical role of ARID4B in breast cancer tumorigenesis and its contribution to resistance against endocrine therapies, underscoring the urgent need for targeted pharmacological interventions. Researchers at George Washington University (GW) ...

Innovative Diagnostic Tool for Predicting Breast Cancer Progression Risk

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 08:27:49 GMT

Breast cancer is a significant health concern, as it is the most common cancer in women worldwide and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. The main challenge in treating breast cancer is identifying which cases of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) are likely to progress to invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC). DCIS, a non-invasive form of breast cancer, makes up around 20% of new breast cancer diagnoses each year. Although more than half of DCIS cases do not develop into invasive cancer, the lack of reliable predictive diagnostic tools often leads to aggressive trea...

Novel Combination Immunotherapy Targeting CD47-SIRPα Axis and HDAC6 Inhibition

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 08:00:48 GMT

Recent advances in cancer therapy have increasingly focused on harnessing the body's immune system to combat cancer cells. Histone deacetylases (HDACs) play a critical role in the epigenetic regulation of gene expression by remodeling chromatin. HDAC inhibitors are recognized for their ability to induce cancer cell cycle arrest, differentiation, apoptosis, reduce angiogenesis, and modulate the immune response. Another promising therapeutic target is the CD47-SIRPα axis, which is involved in immune evasion mechanisms. CD47, expressed on the surface of cancer cells, interacts with SIRP...

Reinforcement Learning for Fault-tolerant Energy-efficient NoC Design

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 10:51:22 GMT

Researchers at GW have developed a novel, cost-effective, energy-efficient computer architecture design based on reinforcement learning (RL) for use in various computing applications. The disclosed design has better fault-tolerance, reliability, network latency than existing solutions. The disclosed computer architecture design can include an Error Correction Code (ECC) based fault-tolerant scheme and a dynamic control policy driven by RL. This design can particularly address three major limitations of conventional computer architecture designs: performance scaling, power budget, and security ...

Compact ultra-low power 2x2 Photonic Switch on Silicon

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 10:48:55 GMT

Researchers at George Washington University recently invented an optical switching technology for future photonics network-on-chip (NOC). This invention enables compact, cost-effective two orders of magnitude increases in bandwidth and dramatically more energy-efficient communication between CPU’s compared to traditional electrical interconnects. Photonics-based communication is the backbone of the internet. The trend over the last 10 years is to steadily expand the applications domain of photonics into shorter distances e.g. from long haul communications (~100% photonics) to...

Efficient Floating-Point SRAM Compute-in-Memory by Harnessing Mantissa Addition

tco@gwu.edu — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 13:13:31 GMT

In the era of machine learning, particularly in the context of compute-in-memory (CIM) systems, has been rapidly evolving to meet the escalating demands of high computational efficiency and energy conservation. Existing SRAM CIM approaches have often focused on either fully digital or analog domains, leading to trade-offs between accuracy and energy efficiency. This has limited their potential, especially for floating-point operations, crucial in many mission-critical applications like autonomous driving and defense drones, where even minor inaccuracies can have significant consequences. Rese...

SAM: Spintronic Approximate Memory

tco@gwu.edu — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 12:43:54 GMT

In the ever-evolving landscape of artificial intelligence (AI), achieving power efficiency without sacrificing accuracy has been a perennial challenge. Traditional methods, such as low supply voltage SRAM and low refresh rate DRAM, have aimed to reduce power consumption but have fallen short due to their lack of bitwise control over memory accuracy. Additionally, quantized neural networks, while effective in reducing computational and memory requirements through weight quantization but suffers from significant drawbacks such as loss of model accuracy, training challenges, and sensitivity to we...

Combating Opioid-Induced Respiratory Depression Using Setmelanotide

tco@gwu.edu — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 10:17:00 GMT

The opioid crisis is a serious public health crisis in the United States. Mortality from opioid overdose increased by roughly ten times from 1999 to 2021. The primary cause of death is due to opioid-induced respiratory depression (OIRD). Currently, Naloxone and Nalmefene are actively used to reverse OIRD in emergency settings and by first responders. Both these drugs are µ-opioid receptor (MOR) antagonists, which compete with the opioid agents for the same receptors. As a result, they reverse the analgesia and also induce withdrawal, which has limited its application in the field. Resea...

Probiotics to treat or prevent gut colonization by drug-resistant E. Coli

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 13:36:54 GMT

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria threaten public health worldwide. One of the most widespread strains is Escherichia coli sequence type 131, which has a subclone lineage called H30R that is resistant to fluoroquinolones. This subtype, known as ST131-H30R, causes a large number of E. Coli infections that are resistant to antimicrobial treatment. The bacteria can be transmitted through various means, including international travel, within households, or in healthcare settings. ST131-H30R usually resides in the gut as an opportunistic pathogen that can lead to subsequent pathogenic infection of the ...

Oxytocin reverses respiratory depression induced by xylazine-laced fentanyl

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 07:56:20 GMT

The opioid crisis is a serious public health issue in the United States. Synthetic opioids such as fentanyl have contributed significantly to this crisis. However, recent samples have shown the presence of xylazine, a veterinary tranquilizer, with fentanyl. Xylazine was found in almost 80% of fentanyl samples in Maryland between 2021 and 2022. Naloxone is an FDA approved treatment currently used to treat fentanyl overdoses, but naloxone cannot reverse the effects of xylazine. Thus, xylazine is exacerbating the risk of fatality due to opioid use, in particular the opioid induced respiratory dep...

CyBIS, a novel Point of Care (POC) diagnostic test to detect infection

tco@gwu.edu — Fri, 15 Dec 2023 09:34:16 GMT

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed a significant gap in US health security, revealing the need for a rapid detection test for novel and variant pathogens that could potentially be biothreats, while also being able to differentiate between inflammation and infection. Researchers at GW developed a diagnostic test and point of care device called CytoCapture Biomarkers In Situ (CyBIS), which captures human immune cells and measures a specific functional biomarker of infection by either bacteria or virus. CyBIS uses circulating polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMNs) as biosensors to detect any pathogenic...

Tracking of Pedicle Screw Using Extenders and Lenticular Arrays

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 10:33:20 GMT

Existing technologies in the field of spinal surgeries, such as manually bending spinal rods and using pedicle screws with assistive tools, present several drawbacks that hinder the efficiency and precision of surgical procedures. Surgeons currently face challenges in optimizing rod bends while avoiding restrictions on patient movement. The use of assistive devices limits the surgeon's field of vision, potentially leading to inaccuracies in the procedure. These complexities and time-consuming processes call for a solution to enhance surgical outcomes. Researchers at GWU have developed a n...

Conditional Variational Autoencoder for Functional Connectivity Analysis of ASD fMRI Data

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 08:29:28 GMT

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), a complex neurodevelopmental condition, has been a subject of extensive research and clinical investigation due to its diverse manifestations and challenging diagnostic criteria. Existing methods for analyzing functional MRI (fMRI) data, particularly in the context of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), have faced significant limitations such as inherent biases or limited interpretability, making them subjective and potentially biased. These shortcomings underscore the need for more advanced and data-driven approaches that can effectively model and analyze fMRI data...

Butyrate Derivatives for Use in the Rescue Of Mitochondrial Diseased Phenotype and Dysfunction of Patient-Derived Cells

tco@gwu.edu — Wed, 20 Sep 2023 14:41:12 GMT

Mitochondrial respiratory disorders (MRDs) are incurable progressive degenerative diseases resulting from malfunction of mitochondria, which are responsible to generate ATP via the oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) system. One of the most frequent pediatric MRDs is MELAS (Mitochondrial Encephalopathy with Lactic Acidosis and Stroke-like episodes). Patients exhibit clinical symptoms that include encephalopathy, seizures, stroke-like episodes, dementia, ataxia, migraine-like headaches, cognitive impairment, chronic lactic acidosis, cyclical vomiting, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, myopathy, blind...

Memristors and neuromorphic networks for high definition bioelectric diagnostics and therapy

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 11:54:24 GMT

Bioelectric signals within human body control vital human functions. Abnormal variation in these bioelectric signals would impact human health, e.g. leading to deadly conditions such as cardiac arrythmias. The present state of bioelectric signal monitoring relies on microsensors and actuators placed on soft substrates which helps in local data collection but requires external computing devices connected by leads to make interpretation which is both time consuming and bulky. Researchers at George Washington university have developed a novel idea to incorporate data interpretation, ...

SPACX- A silicon-based Photonic accelerator for DNN Chiplets architecture

tco@gwu.edu — Wed, 06 Sep 2023 13:02:35 GMT

The continuous increase in size and complexity of deep neural network (DNN) models leads to rapidly increasing demand for computing capacity which has outpaced the scaling capability of conventional monolithic chips. Chiplet-based DNN accelerators have emerged as a promising solution for continuous scaling. Nevertheless, the metallic-based interconnects in these accelerators create a bottleneck due to the high latency and excessive power consumption during long-distance communication. Researchers at George Washington University have created a novel idea to overcome the communication bottleneck...

Generating Mature Cardiomyocytes from Stem Cells with Genetic Engineering

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 28 Aug 2023 12:31:49 GMT

Cardiomyocytes can be generated in vitro with high throughput and quality at a clinically relevant scale using pluripotent stem cells. However, these cardiomyocytes are phenotypically similar to ones at early fetal stage and often lack the attributes of adult or mature cardiomyocytes which are desirable for drug screening, modelling of adult onset diseases or replacing cells lost to disease. The major difference between immature and mature cardiomyocytes lies in the electrophysiology of the cells, which is determined by the presence or absence of specific ion channels on the cell membrane. Re...

Engineered Nanoparticles Improve Immune Response to Photothermal Therapy for Cancer

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 08:15:41 GMT

Neuroblastoma is a severe form of cancer and accounts for 15% of all cancer related deaths among children. However, the current modalities of treating this cancer have limited efficacy and are deficient in preventing recurrence. This can be attributed to the heterogeneous and immunosuppressive nature of the cancer coupled with low neoantigen expression. Researchers at GW developed a novel immunotherapy that has the potential to overcome these obstacles. These researchers propose a Prussian Blue Nanoparticle (PBNP) based photothermal therapy (PTT) in combination with CpG, a toll like receptor ...

Soft, bioresorbable, transparent microelectrode array for cardiac applications

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 09:55:58 GMT

Cardiovascular diseases, including heart failure, arrhythmias, and myocardial infarctions continue to be a significant global health concern, leading to a high morbidity and mortality rate. There is a pressing need to address these challenges by accurately mapping and modulating cardiac physiology. Existing implantable devices are widely used for electrical mapping and stimulation of the heart. However, these devices are designed for long-term use and often require surgical extraction, leading to additional risks and costs for patients. Researchers at George Washington University and Northwes...

Two Optical Convolutional Neural Network Accelerator

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:58:02 GMT

In today's AI revolution, Neural Networks (NNs) have taken center stage, driving remarkable progress in artificial intelligence over the past decade. However, existing technologies like FPGA and GPU implementations, though widely used for accelerating Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) face significant limitations in terms of speed, energy efficiency, and susceptibility to hardware noise. FPGA and GPU implementations struggle with redundant data queries and communication latencies, resulting in under-utilization of computing resources, hindering advancements in energy-efficient computing...

System and Method for Simultaneous Terahertz Imaging with Information and Power Transfer

tco@gwu.edu — Wed, 05 Jul 2023 09:58:27 GMT

The demand for wireless communication is increasing exponentially. 6G wireless network is slated to be the successor for the present 5G wireless network technology. It includes usage of the Terahertz (THz) signal band. There have been strides in THz semiconductor and antenna technology, but there are some major issues to consider. Two of the issues of interest for implementing THz wireless communication are wireless power transmission, and beamforming to reduce information transmission losses. Researchers at George Washington university have developed a technique to efficiently tr...

High Throughput Microfluidic Perfusion Bioreactor

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 30 May 2023 12:47:28 GMT

Bioreactors are usually used to control the growth of microorganisms or cells for pharmaceutical research and drug development. However, no bioreactor currently available in the market can provide in vivo-like conditions in a high throughput standard microtiter format. Moreover, they require significant modifications of the well-plate to achieve perfusion which make them bulky, expensive, and incompatible with common optical analysis techniques. Researchers at GW have developed a high throughput microfluidic perfusion bioreactor compatible with the standard 96-well micro titer plate and ...

Full-focused plenoptic/Variable Objective Macroscopic Plenoptic Imaging

tco@gwu.edu — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 10:38:17 GMT

Plenoptic imaging is a technology that captures information about the light field emanating from an object which can be compared to a 3D image. It has varied applications, some of which are facial recognition, the medical industry, autonomous driving, scientific instruments, and consumer products. The present stage of the technology is limited by the size of the machines and the cost of implementation. Researchers at George Washington University have developed a novel idea where an optical configuration enables three-dimensional imaging using a plenoptic technique with micro lens arrays. Unli...

SYNERGISTIC ENHANCEMENT OF LI-AIR BATTERY CAPACITY USING CNC/MWCNT COMPOSITES

tco@gwu.edu — Wed, 01 Mar 2023 09:50:19 GMT

There is a clear need to increase energy densities of batteries for use in electric vehicles and airplanes. Using Li-O2 is a solution with theoretical energy densities close to 3500( Wh/Kg), cheap to manufacture as carbon is the cathode material used instead of costly metals as is the case with Li-ion batteries. Carbon-Nano-tube(CNT) is the state of the art material being used for manufacturing Li-O2 battery cathodes as of now. The use of CNT for cathode is expensive and uses environmentally toxic material for its manufacturing. Researchers at George Washington University has developed ...

Wall-shear-stress Optical Probe

tco@gwu.edu — Wed, 01 Mar 2023 09:18:53 GMT

Researchers at GW have invented a novel method to measure wall-shear-stress (WSS) by means of an optical probe. The novel device on which the method may be implemented is highly compact and can this be deployed in situ when taking into account, spatial considerations on an industrial scale. This also translates to the device being cost-effective. A salient aspect of the invention is that it can measure directly and with rapidity, WSS at both high spatial and temporal resolutions in comparison to extant approaches and devices. Finally, the invention is non-intrusive and can be integrated into o...

Localization and treatment of arrhythmia using Balloon Catheterization method

tco@gwu.edu — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 07:40:08 GMT

Arrhythmias is a cardiac condition that affects 1.5 to 5% of the American population and a leading cause of cardiac incidents and death. As arrhythmia is a paroxysmal condition, accurate detection of affected area and targeted treatment is paramount for recovery. Researchers at George Washington University have developed a novel idea to use balloon catheter to both detect and localize arrhythmia affected region and administer treatment using a single electrode array. The electrode array can be permanently implanted to actively monitor the patient for instances of arrhythmia. The system ...

Wearable Auscultation device for continuous Chest sound monitoring

tco@gwu.edu — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 10:24:45 GMT

Researchers at George Washington University have a developed a novel device that can continuously monitor auscultations, which works as a replacement for a stethoscope. The device uses microphones, microcontrollers, audio filters, signal amplification devices, data storage and Bluetooth. This device has real applications in the treatment and personalized management of asthma or COPD. This can give real time insights for physicians and patient users into asthma attack triggers, lung function, and effectiveness of treatment that can help tailor treatment regimens for patients. ...

T cells targeted against multiple antigens for cancer treatment

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 26 Jan 2023 08:24:27 GMT

GW researchers developed a cell therapy platform to manufacture multi-antigen-specific immune cell products for treating cancer. Tumors often are sheltered from attack by a patient's immune system. One problem is immune cells at the tumor may be dysfunctional, so they are unable to recognize and eliminate the tumor cells. Current gold-standard cellular immunotherapies involve genetically engineering an immune cell to target a specific tumor antigen, but genetic engineering is time- and labor-intensive, and generally target a few, defined antigens. Since tumors are heterogeneous, they can e...

Malaria mRNA vaccine

tco@gwu.edu — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 09:22:21 GMT

Nearly half of the world's population is at the risk of contracting malaria. According to the World Health Organization, Malaria remains a primary cause of childhood illness and death in sub-Saharan Africa. Recent studies provide evidence of the immunogenicity of mRNA vaccines against Plasmodium falciparum - the parasite responsible for most severe infections and nearly all malaria-related deaths vaccines. Results on combination vaccines support development of malaria mRNA vaccines targeting multiple parasite stages and species. GW and UPenn researchers developed and performed pre-clinica...

Hybrid interconnects for on-chip communication: A solution with low latency and efficient energy consumption

tco@gwu.edu — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 14:08:52 GMT

As computer chip feature size continue to decrease, power consumed due to on-chip communications will dramatically grow. This calls for new techniques which can provide higher bandwidth and data rates than over traditional electrical interconnects. Photonic interconnects can provide higher bandwidth and data rates. However optoelectronic devices generally require more power and a large footprint. Conversely, plasmonic interconnects can provide energy efficiency and small footprint, but have lower bandwidth and data rates. To overcome these problems the George Washington University (GW) ...

Height-Controlled Mirror for High Accuracy Axial Localization Microscopy

tco@gwu.edu — Wed, 28 Sep 2022 14:01:40 GMT

Dynamic, nanoscale interactions on and near the plasma membrane of live cells participate in critical cell biological functions (e.g. cell adhesion and migration), but many aspects are not yet described due to the state of investigative tools. Applicable tools like Scanning Angle Interference Microscopy (SAIM) can perform nanoscale 3D localization in the plasma membrane. However, the current version of SAIM only works on fixed or ruptured cells and does not allow for real-time monitoring of topological dynamics in live cells. Moreover, its applicability has been limited to the edge of th...

Two-dimensional material based gas sensor array and enhancement of its performance using surface acoustic wave

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 13 Sep 2022 11:54:27 GMT

Researchers at George Washington university have developed a novel method to detect gaseous environmental pollutants using 2D material-based gas sensor arrays, with surface acoustic wave to increase performance. With the increased demand for environmental protection, the need for even more accurate gaseous sensor arrays cannot be overlooked and is in high demand. This method in comparison with traditional chemiresistor sensor-based method has shown to have exceptional performance under room temperature and have shown to demonstrate promising physical, electrical and optical properties. This me...

Generation and enhancement of surface acoustic waves on highly doped P-Type GaAs substrates

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 29 Aug 2022 12:56:00 GMT

Researchers at GW have developed a novel method to enhance the piezoelectric property of weak or none piezoelectric materials(GaAs) using surface acoustic waves and strong piezoelectric material (ZnO). This will help in generating piezoelectric effect on materials that can be used in electronic applications and optoelectronic devices. This disclosed invention can be implemented as a device/method. The method is made up of SAW(Surface acoustic wave) device implemented in an island format which has been successfully tested in the lab on a highly doped P-Type GaAs substrate which has enhanced th...

Symmetry-Detecting Spiking Artificial Neural Network

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 09 May 2022 21:01:34 GMT

Researchers at GW have developed a novel and efficient solution to detect symmetry lines and points within multidimensional spatial data that could be utilized in data processing and robotics. The solution can take the form of one or more artificial neural networks that can be configured to efficiently detect symmetry lines and points within multidimensional spatial data. The solution includes aspects such as (i) amplitude of a tensor space of the distribution of distance; (ii) a specific configuration of a spiking neural network capable of acting on its inputs in a manner identical to a thres...

Hybrid Photonic Plasmonic Non-blocking Wide Spectrum WDM On-chip Router

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 09 May 2022 20:59:19 GMT

Researchers at GW have developed a novel hybrid photonic plasmonic non-blocking wide spectrum WDM On-chip Router. The disclosed invention is highly energy efficient. For example, the design could be used as optical routers in optical networks with non-blocking routing strategy, femtojoule energy efficiency and ultra-high operating speed. Further, through integration with plasmonics, this optical router has broadband operation spectrum with wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) support. The disclosed invention is also highly cost-effective. For instance, the disclosed hybrid photonic plasmonic...

Graphene-based Plasmonic Slot Electro-optic Modulator

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 09 May 2022 20:56:08 GMT

Researchers at GW have developed a novel, cost-effective solution to perform electrical optical conversion. The solution can be a device or a design that can be graphene-based and can be a plasmonic slot electro-optic modulator as can be appreciated. The solution has a range of applications and advantages. For example, the novel solution is energy efficient, has enhanced performance, and is cost-effective in comparison to extant prior art. The novel solution uses optical electromagnetic wave propagating in the slot waveguide as signal, and therefore has a higher bandwidth due to low RC delay a...

Functional Casing in Erasure Coded Storage

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 09 May 2022 20:53:13 GMT

Researchers at GW have developed a novel, cost-effective, energy-efficient solution, in the field of storage systems, to perform functional casing in erasure coded storage systems. The solution has applications in various computing architecture related products as can be appreciated. For instance, the solution utilizes a novel casing approach in erasure coded storage that is functional. The solution can process a plurality of files that may be stored on a plurality of servers, and which may further be located in the same or separate data centers. The disclosed cache optimization routine can pr...

Background Traffic Management

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 09 May 2022 20:51:06 GMT

Researchers at GW have developed a novel solution that serves to solve the problem of background traffic management in data communication systems. The solution has an enhanced performance in comparison to extant prior art. In data communication systems in computing products (with respect to storage traffic), given the increase in background traffic, functions such as repairing, rebalancing, backing up, and recovering require efficient techniques to effectively manage data travel from one point to another. The disclosed novel solution addresses issues directed to improper prioritization, schedu...

All Optical Fast Fourier Transform on Chip

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 09 May 2022 20:47:59 GMT

Researchers at GW have developed a novel solution that can perform Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) in a nontrivial computation by parallelism. The novel solution can be a device involving All Optical Fast Fourier Transform (OFFT) on Chip which has the benefits of being a high speed, low energy, and powerful signal processing tool. The novel solution can be used in optical communication and opto-electronic devices (including OFDM, optical processors/coprocessors), as well as computation devices (for example, in analog signal processing which can be used in aviation and aeronautics applica...

Residue Number System Adder and Multiplier based on Integrated Nanophotonics

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 09 May 2022 20:44:48 GMT

Researchers at GW have developed a novel, cost-effective, and energy-efficient residue number system (RNS) adder and multiplier that is based on integrated nanophotonics. The disclosed invention utilizes multiplication-accumulation computation (MAC) operations that can use one summand/multiplicand repetitively millions of times. In other words, aspects of the disclosed photonic RNS engine is well suited for deep learning application such as can be used in convolutional neural networks by transferring a given weighted matrix into switch states. The disclosed invention: can open the door of comp...

EZ-PASS: An Energy & Performance-Efficient Power-gating Router Architecture for Scalable NoCs

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 09 May 2022 20:37:10 GMT

Researchers at GW have developed a novel router architecture that is capable of being implemented on various networking applications. The router architecture can be used for high-performance communication which only consumes little energy while still providing high speed. This architecture has a greater impact on applying power-gating for various interconnects in many-core, GPU, and heterogeneous systems. Further, in comparison with conventional power-gating techniques, this router architecture can provide more flexible bypassing functions which allows flits go through multiple ports to multip...

A Hardware-based Cyber-deception Framework to Combat Malware

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 28 Apr 2022 13:13:10 GMT

Researchers at GW have developed a hardware-based cyber-deception framework that can effectively combat malware directed to attacking computer systems. In particular, the framework works deceptively and transparently, to modify the underlying malware during program runtime and strategically deflects the malware from accessing sensitive information associated with or otherwise stored in the system. The framework is also capable of adapting itself to various types of malwares known in the art, owing to its monitoring mechanism and associated feedback mechanism. In summary, the framework can obse...

Medium for freezing and thawing T cells or NK cells for therapies or diagnostics

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 25 Apr 2022 08:54:37 GMT

Immune cells display a range of phenotypes (eg. regulatory, memory, or activated) that are regulated by and regulate the assortment of proteins expressed on their surface. Unfortunately, freezing and thawing of immune cells causes loss of important surface proteins. In the case of cell therapies (like T cell or NK cell), loss of surface proteins from freezing during the manufacturing process can impair their efficacy. Immune cells are also frozen in the process of diagnosing their phenotype, in which case loss of surface proteins leads to an incorrect diagnosis. The inventors discovered...

The Reconfigurable Optical Coprocessor

tco@gwu.edu — Fri, 15 Apr 2022 14:26:30 GMT

Researchers at GW have developed a novel, cost-effective, energy-efficient solution having enhanced performance, programmable array of photonic R (and LC) components using nanoplasmonics technology in order to solve systems that can be described through differential equations and converted into electrical analogues. The solution involves computing processes are in optical domain with ultra-high frequency allowing for enhanced performance. The solution is also highly cost-effective and energy-efficient as the associated optical co-processor is based on metatronics. The proposed meta-nano circu...

Reuse-trap: Re-purposing Cache Reuse Distance to Defend against Side Channel Leakage

tco@gwu.edu — Fri, 15 Apr 2022 14:20:49 GMT

Researchers at GW have developed a novel solution that serves to capture the activity of an adversary in a cache timing channel. The novel solution can detect advanced attack variants of cache timing channel which can evade the detection of the existing technology by mimicking activities of benign applications and obfuscating mutual eviction patterns. The novel solution can also mitigate efficiently detected cache timing channels by re-purposing existing hardware prefetcher. The novel solution utilizes cache reuse distance, in that it measures cache reuse distance to captures the necessary act...

Method and System for Detecting Lateral Movement in Enterprise Computer Networks

tco@gwu.edu — Fri, 15 Apr 2022 14:16:50 GMT

Researchers at GW have developed a novel solution that can detect lateral movement in enterprise level computer networks. The novel solution can be fully unsupervised, does not require any labeled training data, thus making it highly generalizable to different environments. This solution is particularly useful in detecting advanced adversaries, also known in the art as Advanced Persistent Threats (APT), that utilize zero-day exploits, novel malware, and other stealthy procedures. Furthermore, this solution utilizes information derived from industry standard logging practices, rendering it imme...

A Robust Photovaltaic Receiver for Free-Space Power Beaming

tco@gwu.edu — Fri, 15 Apr 2022 14:12:45 GMT

Researchers at GW have developed a novel, cost-effective, energy-efficient solution to produce electrical energy from a laser light source when transmitted through free-space in vacuum using a photovoltaic (PV) array. The light source can also include other man-made optical energy sources while the propagation medium can include mediums such as air or water. The disclosed invention can typically be used in applications that involve laser power beams and these can include systems associated with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), systems associated with ground-based sensor networks as can be appr...

Apparatus for Automated Nerve Identification with Polarimetric Imaging and Artificial Intelligence

tco@gwu.edu — Fri, 15 Apr 2022 14:08:21 GMT

Researchers at GW have developed a novel solution to identify nerve tissues that can allow an accurate effective performance of a nerve-related surgery. The novel solution is based on a deep-learning network framework that utilizes a U-Net architecture with a Transformer block based fusion module at the bottleneck. The identification of nerve tissues may occur from a multi-modal optical imaging system. The novel solution also affords a heightened situational awareness during surgery thus allowing a respective surgeon to better perform associated duties. The novel solution also affords a respec...

Microencapsulation of friction modifiers for friction reduction in engines and machineries

tco@gwu.edu — Fri, 15 Apr 2022 14:01:10 GMT

Researchers at GW have developed new novel microencapsulation technology to encapsulate friction modifiers (FMs) (both organic and Mo-containing FMs) for automotive and diesel engines. The technology has several features: continuous additive release; triggered release; and slow continuous release and triggered release. The microcapsule size can be controlled and modified to pass through normal engine filters. Besides, FMs, the technology allows inclusion of other additives (antioxidants, and other selected enhancers to prolong the effectiveness of the FMs. The microencapsulated FMs have been v...

Schematic Operation of On-line Update Matrix Decomposer Architecture for Machine Learning Hardware

tco@gwu.edu — Fri, 15 Apr 2022 13:28:09 GMT

Researchers at GW have developed an effective, improved, and cost-effective training acceleration solution that is novel, for large scale neural networks in the field of Artificial Intelligence. The novel solution can also be implemented in a variety of hardware applications that is associated with training acceleration in machine learning as can be appreciated. The novel solution can include a computer architecture that can effectively calculate a weight matrix update for a neuromorphic network. The novel solution also includes aspects such as reduced time, area, energy, memory needed to oper...

Therapeutic Peptide ND-13 to Prevent Injury from Chronic Kidney Disease

tco@gwu.edu — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 13:07:58 GMT

GW and Tel Aviv University researchers developed a small peptide, ND-13, for treatment of chronic kidney disease (CKD). The only current treatment of CKD and end-stage renal disease is renal replacement therapy via dialysis or kidney transplantation. There remains a need to provide alternative therapies for treating kidney disorders. ND-13 contains 7 amino acids to help with cell penetration, plus 13 amino acids from the chaperone protein DJ-1. DJ-1 is expressed in kidney among other tissues and is involved in regulating cell growth and anti-oxidant defense. DJ-1 silencing leads to hypertensio...

Potent And-1 Inhibitors that Suppress Tumor Growth and Overcome Platinum Drug Resistance

tco@gwu.edu — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 12:37:20 GMT

Ovarian cancer (OC) is one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths in women. The survival rate of ovarian cancer patients is low largely due to platinum-based chemotherapy resistance and lack of alternative regimens. Recent studies showed that the Acidic nucleoplasmic DNA-binding protein 1 (And-1) activation promotes platinum drug resistance of OC. And-1 inhibitors re-sensitize platinum-resistant OC to platinum drugs. GW and CAMS & PUMC researchers identified three potent And-1 inhibitors that inhibit cell growth of multiple cancer types and overcome platinum drug resistance of OC ...

SENP1 Enzymatic Activity Inhibitors for Platinum Resistant Ovarian Cancer

tco@gwu.edu — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 12:30:49 GMT

Ovarian cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths in women. The survival rate of ovarian cancer patients is low largely due to platinum-based chemotherapy resistance and lack of alternative regimens. A recent study indicated that Janus tyrosine kinase 2 (JAK2), which activates the signal transducers and activators of transcription (STAT) proteins in the cytoplasm and anti-apoptosis signaling is responsible for this platinum drug resistance. Multiple candidate drugs targeting JAK2 were discontinued in clinical trials due to toxicity and off-target effects. Finding a new targe...

Intranasal leptin to treat opioid-induced respiratory depression (OIRD) in obese patients

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 05 Apr 2022 07:23:10 GMT

Respiratory depression is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality associated with opioids. Patients with obesity experience pain and need opioids more frequently than normal-weight individuals. Chronic consumption of opioids is associated with addiction, physical dependence, and tolerance. Tolerance leads to requirement of higher doses of opioids for hospital procedures. Opioids remain an indispensable treatment for severe pain despite increased risk for obese patients with tolerance. Of particular concern is opioid-induced respiratory depression (OIRD), especially during sleep, due to co...

Transgenic T cells with enhanced anti-tumor cytotoxicity to treat cancers

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 22 Mar 2022 11:31:23 GMT

CAR T cell therapy recently achieved success in treating blood cancers. Drugs Kymriah and Yescarta are FDA approved for treating hematological malignancies. However, existing T cell therapies are not effective in treating solid tumors, partly due to T cell exhaustion and lack of sufficient memory T cell populations. GW researchers invented a way to engineer T cells that exert anti-tumor cytotoxicity for a longer duration. Engineered T cells over expressing COBRA-1 protein, avoid T cell exhaustion and have larger memory T cell populations. This results in significantly higher tumor killing act...

Accurate Detection of Binary Code Similarity for Computer Vulnerability Analysis

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 09:24:35 GMT

Researchers at GW have developed a system that can accurately detect binary code similarity in the context of computer vulnerability analysis. The system utilizes a graph neural network model to generate representative embeddings for provenance identification amongst various binary codes extant in the art, to improve the accuracy associated with the detection of vulnerabilities that may be present in binary codes. The system particularly creates a representation of a binary code during run-time, called an attributed function call graph (AFCG), in order to accurately differentiate between close...

Sensor Network for Validation of Healthy Buildings and Transportation Systems

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 09:17:46 GMT

Researchers at GW have developed a sensor network that can be utilized in validation of healthy buildings and transportation systems. The sensor network can be a system that can achieve the validation by means of airflow optimization. The sensor network system allows for a highly efficient and highly accurate assessment as to undesirable particles that may be present in a room or a like space. Next, the sensor network system can accommodate undesirable conditions in a room by allowing the effect of adjustments to the room’s configuration and ventilation to be tested against adverse healt...

Anti-inflammatory adoptive cell therapy using macrophages for enhanced tissue regeneration and wound healing

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 10 Mar 2022 10:38:29 GMT

Patients dealing with organ transplants, autoimmune disorders, chronic wounds, ischemic injury, and other diseases that trigger inflammatory processes often lack effective treatment strategies. Macrophages are key cellular components of innate immunity with varying impacts on inflammation. M1 macrophages are pro-inflammatory, while M2 macrophages are associated with anti-inflammatory reactions and tissue remodeling. GW researchers developed an adoptive cell therapy using immune cells. This therapy is anticipated to suppress local inflammation, enhance wound healing, and enhance tissue r...

High-throughput cardiotoxicity screening of drugs using optical dynamic clamp (ODC)

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 10:53:31 GMT

Cardiotoxicity is a major contributor to drug failure during clinical trials and drug withdrawal from the market. For this reason, new drugs must be screened for cardiotoxicity. High-throughput screening can eliminate unsafe drugs very early in a drug development program, so methods of accurate high-throughput cardiotoxicity screening are very desirable. Human-induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (iPSC-CMs) are an advantageous platform for drug screening because they provide a renewable source of human cardiomyocytes and can be derived from target patient populations. iPSC-CMs ...

Production of Carbon Nanochains and Nanotubes from Biomass

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 08:44:43 GMT

Researchers at GW have invented methods as to the production of carbon nanochains and nanotubes from biomass and other carbonaceous materials. The novel resulting carbon nanochains and nanotubes are highly porous, highly stable, and highly inexpensive. As a result of its porosity, lithium metal can be deposited onto the carbon nanochain material by various known methods which would allow for its effective use as an anode material in lithium metal or ion batteries. Second, sulfur or selenium can also be deposited due to its porosity which would allow for its effective use as a cathode material ...

Multimodal Multilayered Soft Electronics in Advanced Devices

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 08:34:36 GMT

Researchers at GW have invented an electronic system for multimodal diagnostic measurements and therapeutic interventions. The electronic system allows a higher spatial density for the placement of sensors and actuators, thus resulting in a better interface aspect for delivering drugs between any respective contact tissue and any respective portion of the electronic system. This higher spatial density aspect also allows to better stimulate or ablate any relevant tissue, in a given surgical procedure. Particularly, this electronic system can be utilized in medical procedures directed to cardiac...

Conversion of short-chain alcohols to energy-dense hydrocarbon fuel mixtures

tco@gwu.edu — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 07:37:24 GMT

Researchers at the George Washington University have invented a novel mechanism and catalyst to convert a wide variety of alcohols to hydrocarbons and other by-products with high selectivity and lower energy requirements compared to other methods. Multi-step H2-free upgrading of alcohols to liquid hydrocarbons is highly desirable for producing drop-in fuel substitutes, but the limited reports of this process for select substrates require multiple catalysts and base, resulting in limited applicability. Direct conversion processes that do not require base are yet to be reported. We have devel...

Triple-Parametric Optical Mapping for Simultaneous Measurement of Transmembrane Potential, Intracellular Calcium and NADH

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 13:25:36 GMT

Researchers at GW have developed a novel triple-parametric optical mapping method that can effectively, accurately, and simultaneously measure metabolic, electrical, and contractile components associated with cardiac physiology. As a result, this allows effective clinical management of cardiac procedures especially with regards to one aspect known in the art as metabolism-excitation-contraction coupling (MECC). Further, the disclosed triple-parametric optical mapping method can effectively assist in the drug development process by means of effectively determining appropriate dosing for a subje...

Selective His Bundle Mapping and Pacing Method and Device

tco@gwu.edu — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 13:22:13 GMT

Researchers at GW have developed a system that can effectively and accurately allow a respective practitioner to place a “His Bundle Pacing” electrode on a subject’s heart as part of various known cardiovascular procedures. In particular, the system can include a bioelectronic catheter having at least one multilayer electronic array that can allow multiplexed sensing and actuation of various cardio-vessels during various cardiovascular procedures. In an embodiment of the invention, the system effectively prevents the damage of “His Bundle Pacing” electrode during ...

Directed evolution of biomolecules using single PCR mammalian expression generated array (MEGA).

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 07:52:04 GMT

Directed evolution is the process of mutagenizing and screening biomolecules to select specific desired properties, or even unprecedented properties. Directed evolution allows researchers to address increasingly complex questions by creating biomolecules useful in treating disease, removing plastic, carbon, or carbon dioxide from the environment, and synthesizing novel complex organic molecules. Conventional directed evolution methods are laborious and time-consuming because only relatively short genetic segments can be evolved at one time and are limited to a single biomolecule. Extra molecul...

3D Biophotonic Devices for All Optical Electrophysiology

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:30:07 GMT

Optical actuation and sensing methods were demonstrated by GW for high-throughput drug and cardiotoxicity screening. However, modification of target cells takes time, has variable yield and can cause potential interference with cell’s innate functional responses. GW researchers manufactured “spark-cell” spheroids, used as a reagent that can be frozen, transported, and deployed on-site to confer optical pacing of cardiac cells. Since the spheroids are genetically engineered, one no longer needs to genetically modify the target cardiomyocytes of interest. Such spheroids ...

Design and Fabrication Processes of Icephobic Surfaces

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:29:18 GMT

Researchers at GW have invented design and fabrication processes associated with the prevention of ice formation in various surfaces with a particular focus on surfaces associated with sea-ships, space-ships, high-altitude airplanes, and high-altitude aircrafts associated with space travel. One design invented is capable of delaying icing for at least 18 hours at a temperature of -20°C. Yet another design is capable of perpetual delaying of icing with respect to a given temperature. As is apparent, these designs not only are cost-effective, but also are environmentally friendly. The inven...

An Approximate Communication Framework for Network-on-chips

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:28:52 GMT

Reasearchers at GWU have developed an approximate communication framework for network-on-chips (NoCs), which significantly reduces the latency and power consumption of on-chip data movement. The invented framework leverages the fact that big data applications (e.g., recognition, mining, and synthesis) can tolerate modest error and transfers data with the necessary accuracy, thereby improving the energy-efficiency and performance of multi-core processors. Analyzing big data is critical for modern society. Retailers like Amazon, Costco, and Safeway analyze a large amount of user data, suc...

Network Design for Chiplet-based Manycore Architecture

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:28:49 GMT

Researchers at The George Washington University are developing a flexible interconnection network design, called Adapt-Net, for chiplet-based manycore architectures. The goal of Adapt-Net is to support the concurrent communication of diverse applications running at the same time, improving the energy-efficiency and performance of the manycore architecture. Today’s manycore architectures are often deployed to concurrently execute multiple applications. These applications are mapped into different regions of the manycore system, each of which requires significantly different computing...

Self-morphing 4D-printed programmable culture substrate for controlling neural stem cell growth

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:27:23 GMT

Neural stem cells (NSCs) exhibit great promise for treating neurodegenerative diseases and injuries. Treatments will rely on efficient proliferation and differentiation of NSCs into neurons with therapeutic characteristics. Static 2D and 3D microenvironment culture substrates fail to cater to the dynamic cell needs, resulting in sub-optimal, inefficient and uncontrolled differentiation of NSCs. Substrates with micro-wells encourage NSC spheroid formation and cell proliferation, while substrates with micro-grooves are good for maturation, including neurite growth and alignment. GW researchers ...

Immunotherapies Targeting SSX2 Peptide Displayed by MHC on Tumors

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:27:11 GMT

Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cells are making headlines with their recent FDA approvals and ability to eradicate cancers. Most CAR T therapies target tumor cells via a tumor associated antigen (TAA). Unfortunately, TAAs are also expressed on non-cancerous tissues, leading to significant risk for patients. SSX2 protein expression is restricted to germline cells and is frequently expressed in cancer. The p41-49 peptide fragment of SSX2 is displayed by the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) on tumor cells and then activates cytotoxic T cells. Our inventors created the first antibody and...

Non-Invasive Plasma Discharge Tube Device for Treating Brain Tumors

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:27:03 GMT

Treating brain tumors, like glioblastoma, is challenging. Current glioblastoma drugs, Rapamycin and Temozolomide (TMZ), generally only extend life for a matter of months, are not very effective in treating recurring tumors, and have significant clinical toxicity. A novel Plasma Discharge Tube (PDT) device has the potential to be more effective and less toxic. PDT may be used alone or may be used to enhance the efficacy of drugs. GW inventors previously developed a cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) therapy, which is in human trials for treating areas around surgically removed tumors to kill any can...

CMOS Compatible Light Emitting Tunnel Junction for Photonic Integrated Circuits (PIC) and Optical Communication

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:26:42 GMT

With the emergence of photonic integration, the challenges (a) to create light from silicon and (b) to realize electronically compact photonics have delayed the anticipated introduction of photonics into electronic consumer products. While a variety of light emitters exist such as LEDs and semiconductor solid-sate-lasers, existing technology is hindered by: specialized and costly materials such as III-V compound semiconductors; elaborate semiconductor processing techniques such as wafer bonding; limited performance such as direct modulation bandwidths; plasmon lasers require inherently higher ...

System for Predicting Cloud Service Level Agreement Performance & Trustworthiness

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:26:19 GMT

Researchers at The George Washington University are developing a system and method for applying statistical and machine learning models to calculate and rank cloud service provider (CSP) trustworthiness levels and predict cloud computing service performance and availability compliance against industry standards based cloud service level agreements (SLAs). Considering the rate of adoption and dependency on cloud services along with potential risk and impact, important topics need to be considered on behalf of cloud service customers (CSCs) and cloud service providers (CSPs). Topics include CSP...

PMU-Embedded Analytics for Online Event Detection and Classification in Power Grids

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:25:54 GMT

The energy requirement of the world is increasing exponentially every year. With the power demand sites concentrated in the region with the highest population density, energy production sites must be located remotely. This isolation requires lengthy and complicated grids to be designed and manufactured to transmit power over long distances. Grid failures and blackouts profoundly impact a region's social and economic conditions, and thus grids require constant monitoring. Researchers at George Washington University have designed a novel idea to incorporate analytical capabilities within th...

FAST LABEL-FREE METHOD FOR MAPPING CARDIAC PHYSIOLOGY

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:25:32 GMT

Researchers at The George Washington University are developing a fast label-free mapping system of excitation-contraction-metabolic waves at hundreds to thousands (e.g., 100-5,000) of frames per second for mapping cardica physiology. Such a system allows for clinical mapping of atrial and ventricular arrhythmia during, or prior to, ablation procedures to guide such procedures through the identification of the source/driver or sources/drivers of atrial tachycardia or fibrillation and of ventricular tachycardia or fibrillation. The system has a number of benefits and advantages. First, a fast l...

Materials and Coatings of Variable Density for Electrodes and Catalysts

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:25:25 GMT

Researchers at The George Washington University have developed innovative methods to produce materials and coatings, which can be used for electrodes in batteries, fuel cells, electrochemical cells, and energy-production devices, for catalysts and other purposes. This novel technology enables the production and engineering of materials (and coatings) of widely variable densities: from less than 10% of normal density up to normal density. The materials can be engineered to include various with Nanometer-Scale Sub-structures and Micrometer-Scale Sub-Structures. The variability is ac...

In vitro drug treatment to proliferate and activate effector cells for immunotherapy

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:24:56 GMT

STAT5 SUMOylation inhibition increases CD4 and CD8 T-cell proliferation and and production of immune effector molecules in CD8 T-cells and NK (natural killer) cells. Both attributes address critical limiting factors in applying cell therapies to fighting cancers and pathogens. The difficulty of obtaining enough activated effector cells limits the efficacy of cell therapies. In vitro drug treatment of effector cells prior to administration to patients can overcome this deficiency. The technique is compatible with the full range of cell therapies, including genetically modified T cell ...

Water Purification Materials: Improving Pd Dispersion and Hydrogenation Reactivity

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:24:42 GMT

Researchers at The George Washington University have developed novel industrially viable catalysts for water purification, catalytic hydrogenation and other engineering application. In addition, an efficient, sustainable, low-cost, and potentially scalable method to tailor activated carbon (AC) supports for Pd-based catalysis with improved performance for water purification has been developed. Catalyst supports have been found to significantly influence catalytic performance. Metal oxides, for example, Al2O3, SiO2, and TiO2, have been frequently used as catalyst supports. However, the applica...

Antibiotic for Veterinary Staphylococcal Infections

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:24:03 GMT

New bacteriostatic compounds treat Staphylococcal strains that infect bovine, cat, and dog populations. Staphylococcal infections affect an estimated 20% of bovine populations in the dairy industry, and are the single largest indication for antibiotic use on dairy farms. Staphylococcal infections lead to a cost of greater than $1 billion per year to U.S. farms. Isoprenoids are an ancient, large, and essential class of biomolecules critical for electron transport, cell membranes, pigments, signaling, and more. Isoprenoids are synthesized via two biochemical pathways, the MEP pathway and the me...

Thick 3D Bioprinted Cardiac Patch with Anisotropic and Perfusable Vessels

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:23:25 GMT

GW researchers fabricated a vascularized patch of cardiac tissue suitable for cardiac regeneration using 3D bioprinting. Cardiovascular disease involving myocardial infarction is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Following myocardial infarction, adult cardiac tissue cannot significantly repair or regenerate itself. Current therapies include autografts, allografts, xenografts, and artificial prostheses. Disadvantages of the standard of care include donor tissue shortages, immune rejection, required anticoagulation therapy, and limited durability. 3D bioprinting avoids or mitig...

Catalytic Transfer Hydrogenation of CO2 to Potassium Formate using Glycerol as a Hydrogen Source

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:22:44 GMT

To simultaneously transform CO2 and glycerol, two low-value by-products, into formate and lactate can be highly economically attractive. Presently, however, it is challenging to achieve the reaction on an industrial scale. GW researchers developed novel single-site supported heterogeneous catalysts that can simultaneously convert CO2 and glycerol into formate and lactate under batch or continuous flow conditions. The novel single-site supported heterogeneous catalysts consist of Ir or Ru N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) that are functionalized with sulfonates. In addition, synthetic hyd...

And-1 Inhibition by DHS for Cancer Treatment

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:22:27 GMT

GW researchers developed DHS (4,4’-trans-dihydroxystilbene) as a new cytotoxic anticancer drug for use alone or in combination with other chemotherapies. Drug toxicity and drug resistance limit the ability of many cytotoxic cancer drugs to effectively treat cancer, a problem which is overcome by DHS. The cancer killing efficacy of DHS is 10-times better than its parent compound, resveratrol, which is well known as the anti-oxidant abundant in red wine and blueberries. Resveratrol has cleared phase I human trials and is a commonly used dietary supplement. DHS represses And-1 function, th...

Organ-on-Chip high-throughput apparatus for in vitro preclinical trials on human cardiac slices

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:21:53 GMT

Researchers at the George Washington University have invented a novel apparatus and method allowing high-throughput testing of pharmacological agents and therapeutic virus on human tissue (e.g. human cardiac slices). The apparatus can be used to create induced disease models for testing of therapies targeting specific diseases. For example, heart failure can be induced in cardiac slices using chronic beta-adrenergic stimulation. Various functional parameters such as conduction velocity, action potential duration, contractility, and degree of fibrosis can be measured to assess effic...

MitoScope: Minimally Invasive Device for Measuring the Energy Production Rate of Heart Tissue

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:21:08 GMT

The minimally invasive MitoScope assesses the metabolic rate of heart tissue in vivo, non-destructively, and in real-time. MitoScope measures the mitochondrial enzyme activity of the heart to provide unique insight that could improve the treatment of heart failure, coronary heart disease, diabetes, and many other diseases that alter myocardial metabolism. Existing technologies for metabolic assessment of the heart require biopsies and subsequent in vitro lab analysis. The MitoScope circumvents these limitations to provide real-time information. MitoScope is the first ...

Robotic Therapy for Children on the Autism Spectrum

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:20:58 GMT

Researchers at the George Washington University have invented a novel emotional interaction robot and a robotic therapy for children and particularly for children on autism spectrum. The robotic therapy uses behavioral analysis automation to provide treatment and assessment of emotional communication and social skills of children with autism. The rapid increase in the population of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has revealed the deficiency in the realm of therapeutic accessibility for children with ASD in the domain of emotion and social interaction. While there have been a numb...

High-Throughput All-Optical Cardiac Electrophysiology System

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:20:35 GMT

The withdrawal of drugs from the market is a costly consequence of undetected adverse effects or toxicity. Over 30% of such withdrawals are due to cardiac toxicity (pro-arrhythmic effects mediated by cardiac ion channels), therefore regulatory agreements mandate the testing of all new drugs for cardiac liability. GW researchers developed the first scalable automated all-optical system for high-throughput cardiac electrophysiology and electromechanics. The system includes a method for combined optical pacing and optical recording (what we term all-optical electrophysiology) from a variety of p...

Cold atmospheric plasma-stimulated media for treating cancers

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:20:12 GMT

For successful cancer therapy, the most important aspect is selective eradication of cancer cells without damaging healthy cells. Cancer cells and normal cells have different thresholds for tolerance of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen species (RNS) before cell death (apoptosis) is induced. Previously, GW researchers invented a cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) therapy device to increase ROS in areas where tumors were surgically removed, in order to selectively kill any tumor cells that may have been left behind and prevent remission [clinical trials are underway]. Subsequently,...

Vascularized bone construct using dual 3D bio-printing & regional bioactive factors

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:20:07 GMT

GW researchers generated a vascularized and highly osteogenic bone construct with a biphasic structure using a multiple 3D printing platform. Traditional tissue engineering techniques face major obstacles in creating multiple tissue structures and vascularization of tissues. 3D bioprinting allows for control over the location of cells and biomaterials; however monotypic model printing has limitations in creating multi-structured tissues. Vascularization is essential to prevent cell death in internal regions of large implants. Our solution, dual 3D bioprinting, utilizes fused deposition modeli...

Small molecules to prevent HIV-associated coronary artery disease

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:19:59 GMT

HIV-infected patients have high risk of coronary artery disease (CAD). Previously, GW researchers identified HIV regulatory protein Nef as a causative factor in foam cell formation, a precursor condition to CAD. Currently, GW researchers developed compounds that show Nef-neutralizing effects in vitro. The prototype compounds restore cholesterol efflux from HIV-infected cells and prevent HIV-induced inhibition of ATP-binding cassette transporter (ABCA-1) activity. Inhibition of Nef-calnexin interaction disrupts the ability of HIV-1 Nef to downregulate ABCA-1 and block ABCA-1 dependent cho...

Optimization of Cold Atmospheric Plasma-Stimulated Media for Treatment of Cancer

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:19:40 GMT

Previously, GW researchers invented a method to selectively kill cancer cells with cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) while leaving neighboring normal cells intact. In a subsequent study, the researchers showed that similar anti-cancer effects can be achieved indirectly using CAP-stimulated media (CAPSM). Stability of CAPSM (preservation of its anti-cancer property over time) is a key consideration for its future clinical application. Previously, others have reported that CAPSM needs to be stored at -80ºC (-112ºF) for it to maintain its stability for 7 days. In the curre...

3D printed vascularized tissue scaffold with extracellular matrix triggered growth factor release

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:19:29 GMT

Vas-Scaf is a 3D bio-printed vascularized bone scaffold perfused with osteogenic and angiogenic growth factors. Artificial bone grafts lacking vascularization fail due to poor integration of new tissues with the host and death of interior bone tissues. Bone and blood vessel tissues require different support structures and different biochemical stimuli to support tissue growth and differentiation. Vas-Scaf regulates osteogenesis and angiogenesis through growth factors BMP-2 and VEGF, respectively, with both immobilized in their specific regions of the scaffold. Vas-Scaf fabrication starts with...

3D Shape Memory Biomaterial for Tissue Engineering

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:19:26 GMT

Over 120,000 patients are currently waiting for lifesaving organ and tissue transplants. Tissue engineering has the potential to innovate transplant and minimally invasive surgery by creating tissue substitutes from biopolymers with human stem cells. GW researchers developed a plant oil infused biopolymer with unique characteristics that are highly compatible to human tissue engineering. The co-polymerization of polycaprolactone (PCL) triol and castor oil yields a translucent biopolymer that exhibits tri-shape memory effects. Importantly, the synthetic biomaterials can be implanted in a...

Greatly improved Li-ion battery – much higher “energy storage capacity” & “charging rates”

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:19:01 GMT

The problem: most batteries use graphite as anode material. Graphite has poor energy storage capacity. The solution: Researchers at the Geoerge Washington University (GW) have developed a new type of composite materials based on HCNS (hollow carbon nanospheres), which have the ability to charge at much higher rates and greatly exceed the energy-storage capacity of graphite when used to support Li-alloying or Li-compound forming materials. GW researchers have developed a Li-ion battery anode and a cathode composite materials based on HCNS (hollow carbon nanospheres),which can ...

A new small molecule to kill drug-resistant malaria parasites

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:18:34 GMT

GW researchers synthesized the new small molecule, RCB-185, and initially showed efficacy against Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), but now demonstrate much higher efficacy against malaria. According to the World Health Organization, 2015 had 212 million cases of malaria with 429,000 deaths. People desperately need new treatments for malaria, as use of the newest anti-malarial, artemisinin, dates to the 1990’s and artemisinin resistance is spreading. RCB-185 targets Dxr, which is a key enzyme in the non-mevalonate pathway of isoprenoid synthesis. Isoprenoids are essential, but human...

Water Purification System Based on Visible-Light-Responsive Graphitic Carbon Nitride

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:18:12 GMT

Researchers at The George Washington University (GW) have worked on the development and optimization of a carbon nitride based photo-catalytic membrane system in order to create an advanced technology for the purification of water. Our society is currently facing great challenges from environmental pollution. Many organic pollutants such as pharmaceuticals and personal care products, pesticides, and endocrine compounds, are resistant to conventional wastewater and water treatment processes. In order to overcome the challenges these pollutants pose, GW researchers have developed a novel ...

CC-Hunter: Microarchitecture-Level Framework and Method for Covert Timing Channel Detection

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:17:32 GMT

Researchers at The George Washington University have created a microarchitecture-level framework, which implements novel methods and algorithms developed for the detection of hacking covert timing channels that are used by Trojan/spy processes in order to leak confidential information from computing environments relying on shared hardware. Information leakage from shared hardware is a rapidly growing problem. Cloud computing is highly vulnerable to covert timing channels, which are “insider threats”, i.e. illegitimate communication channels established between a Trojan and a spy p...

Microencapsulation of Chemical Additives

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:17:29 GMT

There is a need for a new process for encapsulating complex chemical additives, where microcapsules can give strong performance under hostile chemical and mechanical conditions. While microencapsulation technique is a mature technology, microcapsule products made by traditional techniques may work well only in relatively simple, passive and non-hostile conditions. On the other hand, in engine lubrication applications, both additives to be encapsulated and the surrounding solution may exhibit complex chemistry. Furthermore, lubrication often operates at high temperature, high pressure, and high...

Intranasal Oxytocin Therapy for Obstructive Sleep Apnea

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:17:07 GMT

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a health risk that occurs in 24% of males and 9% of females in the United States. OSA can lead to several cardiovascular diseases including hypertension, arrhythmia, and stroke. Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) treatments often fail due to low compliance. GW Researchers developed an intranasal oxytocin administration method that protects OSA patients by maintaining cardiovascular homeostasis. They also see potential for decreasing awakening events, increasing sleep quality, and increasing compliance with CPAP. Oxytocin is a human peptide hormone wel...

Precision Firing Control of Pulsed Plasma Thrusters

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:16:36 GMT

Precision timing control of thruster operation of a spacecraft employing electric propulsion methods (e.g., pulsed electromagnetic plasma thrusters) is vital for space missions, and also difficult to achieve. When a thruster fires longer (or more powerfully), or shorter (or less powerfully), than required, or is fired in imprecise synchronization with other thrusters, an error can be calculated and the next cycle of thruster operation has to be adjusted to minimize the cumulative error to acceptable limits. In an Electronic Propulsion (EP) system, specifically vacuum arc thrusters utilizing a ...

Handheld microfluidic chip controller with smartphone app

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:16:18 GMT

GW researchers designed a completely automated, handheld smartphone controlled microfluidic liquid handling system. This is compatible with your microfluidic chip and application of choice. The intensive liquid handling steps required for biological sample preparation and assay automation can be a bottleneck in assay throughput. This small, handheld, easy to use point of care device can replace traditional bulky laboratory scale liquid handling systems or time-consuming human run procedures. The prototype created has applications in point-of-care medical diagnostics, environmental testing, foo...

Thinking outside the heart: Use of engineered cardiac tissue for treatment of chronic deep venous insufficiency

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:15:00 GMT

Researchers at George Washington University invented a new organ that can return blood flow to veins lacking functioning valves. The organ is a rhythmic cuff made of cardiac muscle cells that surrounds the vein. The cuff acts as a “mini heart” to aid blood flow through the venous segments. It can be made of a patient’s own adult stem cells, eliminating the chance of implant rejection. Chronic venous insufficiency is one of the most widespread diseases, particularly in developed countries. Its incidence can reach 20-30% in people over 50 years of age. In chronic venous insuff...

Electrical Stimulation of the Claustrum for Treatment of Epilepsy

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:14:27 GMT

One third of people with epilepsy – around 1 million in the US alone – do not respond to antiepileptic medications. Yet, existing technologies offer very limited benefits in controlling seizures in these patients with pharmaco-resistant epilepsy. The present invention presents a method for treating pharmaco-resistant epilepsy by deep brain electrical stimulation. This invention uses a closed-loop system to detect seizures and apply electrical stimulation to the claustrum to inhibit loss of consciousness or alternation of awareness. Alternatively, a ...

Direct Low Cost Production of Graphene Platelets

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:13:46 GMT

In the last ten years graphene has exploded on the scientific scene with its myriad of novel and exciting properties. Graphene has, to name a few of these properties, very high electrical conductivity, superior strength (fifty times stronger than steel), chemical stability, extremely high surface area, and very high thermal conductivity. Structurally it is sheet of carbons atoms one atom thick. These properties have led to interest in using it in an extraordinary range of products: Flatter LCDs Improved printing primers Chemical sensors Improved electrical circuits St...

Flexible Integrated Circuit Packaging

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:13:06 GMT

The George Washington University has invented a way to package integrated circuits (ICs) in a flexible, twistable, and stretchable format. In addition to many applications in wearable electronics, flexible circuits can be useful in any situation where a circuit must conform to a non-uniform space, or allow for deflection during operation. This method enables performance improvements over other flexible circuit technologies by allowing for the use of any standard IC on the market, including CMOS chips. The process enables new applications to take advantage of the high performance, ...

Novel Compounds that Target Mycobacteria and Other Pathogenic Bacteria

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:12:09 GMT

Tuberculosis (TB), caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), is one of the deadliest infectious diseases. Emergence of drug resistant strains of Mtb and co-infection with HIV has made TB both difficult and expensive to treat. New TB therapies are needed to shorten treatment and be effective against all strains and metabolic states of the organism. Mtb synthesize isoprenoids (essential for the bacterial cell wall biosynthesis) via the nonmevalonate pathway, which is absent in humans. Therefore, the bacterial enzymes can be specifically targeted without interfering with human...

Self-Repairing and Self-Sustaining Autonomous Machines

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:11:00 GMT

Machines are subject to wear due to friction between moving parts. The expensive heavy equipment, such as wind turbines and aircraft propellers, are expensive to shut down or repair. Researchers at the George Washington University have developed a real-time sensor and nanotechnology-based system that detects the component surface damage in moving parts, such as gears, and repairs and sustains the moving parts of the machines automatically. The self-repairing system enables the machines that are long-lasting and self-sustaining. The invention deploys a monitoring system of thin fil...

Friction Reduction for Engine Components

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:10:53 GMT

The demand for automobile energy efficiency and higher emission standards encourages the development of modern engines and drive trains that have lower frictional losses at various contact surfaces. One solution for reducing such frictional losses is to add texture modifications to engine/drive train surfaces that come in contact with one another during operation. However, previous texture-adding techniques have proved to be technically or economically inadequate for automobile engine/driving train operating conditions. GW researchers have developed technologies for adding unique geometries a...

Interferometric System for Parameter Measurement at Supersonic Velocities

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:10:08 GMT

The device is a nonintrusive instrument capable of simultaneously measuring the (translational) temperature, bulk velocity and density of gas flows under a wide range of conditions including extremely high temperatures and velocities. The instrument is capable simultaneously measuring the three variables (temperature, velocity and density) of turbulent supersonic and hypersonic gas flows (>Mach 5) at combustion temperatures. The unprecedented ability to make these measurements simultaneously and under such extreme conditions will be of great value to designers and developers of futur...

Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) Resonator as Mass Sensor in Diagnostics

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:09:03 GMT

Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) devices are used in biosensors, gas, and chemical sensors because of their sensitivity to mass perturbations. SAW devices resonate and generate acoustic waves that are converted to electric signals, and vice versa, by the use of Interdigital Transducers or IDTs. The electric signals are then converted to mechanical energy by piezoelectric substrates. SAW devices comprise of an input and an output transducer that convert acoustic waves generated by the SAW resonators to electric signals. During this process, a considerable loss in signal power or insertion los...

Matrix-free Mass Spectrometry on Nanopost Array (NAPA) Chips

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:08:56 GMT

Silicon NAPA chips provide highly efficient ion production for ultratrace analysis and molecular imaging by mass spectrometry without an ionization matrix. Matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization (MALDI) is an established ionization technique for mass analysis of large biomolecules, but analysis of small biomolecules (m/z < 1000) suffers from matrix-related interferences. For this reason, a number of matrix-free ionization platforms are in development. Nanopost arrays capture the energy from ultraviolet laser light thereby promoting efficient sample ionization and sub-femtomolar sensiti...

Laser Ablation Electrospray Ionization (LAESI) Mass Spectrometry: matrix-free ambient 2D or 3D imaging of living tissue without sample preparation

tco@gwu.edu — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:08:50 GMT

LAESI provides very precise in situ chemical analysis of biological samples using mass spectrometry (MS) technique. LAESI enables 2D and 3D imaging of metabolites, lipids, peptides and proteins in biological samples at the single cell level, empowering rapid chemical analyses in multiple fields of biology, medicine and chemistry. The LAESI device embodies an ionization source / sample acquisition accessory to couple to standard mass spectrometers. LAESI uses the water naturally present within biological samples to absorb laser energy and ablate areas of interest with high spatial resolution. T...

A Flexible and Energy-Efficient Accelerator for Graph Convolutional Neural Networks

tco@gwu.edu — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 09:54:44 GMT

Researchers at GW have invented a flexible and energy-efficient accelerator for graph convolutional neural networks (GCN). First, the novel accelerator design disclosed shows highly enhanced performance in comparison to existing accelerators. For example, the accelerator is capable of simultaneously improving resource utilization and data movement in GCNs, while also being capable of reconfiguring the loop order and loop fusion strategy. Second, this also means that the accelerator design is highly adaptable for various GCN configurations. Third, because of this adaptivity, the amount of DRAM ...

An Algorithm-Hardware Co-design Method for Convolutional Neural Networks

tco@gwu.edu — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 09:49:10 GMT

Researchers at GW have developed an algorithm-hardware co-design framework for Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) directed towards mitigating the effects of computational irregularities in existing models. The framework disclosed allows for a reduced model size as to the associated system. For example, the algorithm disclosed utilizes centrosymmetric matrices as convolutional filters thus allows for a much-reduced weights by nearly 50% and enabling a structured computational reuse. Consequently, the new hardware-software co-design framework, significantly increases performance and energy-effi...

Learning-Based High-Performance, Energy-Efficient, and Secure Interconnection Design Framework

tco@gwu.edu — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 07:15:15 GMT

Researchers at the George Washington University have invented a novel network-on-chip framework, named TSA-NoC, which significantly improves on-chip security. The invented framework also minimizes the latency and cost of security techniques for simultaneously improving system-level performance and power. As the market for parallel computing is growing rapidly, the number and complexity of shared resources (processors, memory, sensors, etc.) is increased. Network-on-chips (NoCs) are playing a critical role in computing systems as the standard interconnect fabric solutions for connecting ...