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FDA - Food and Drug Administration

In 2023, the United States imported $732 million in food and agricultural products from Africa, a notable increase from $627 million in 2020 and $599 million in 2018. (Source: Congressional Research Service, African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), July 18, 2019; January 6, 2022; and July 17, 2024.) However, this growth in food imports has been accompanied by a troubling rise in FDA entry refusals. Between 2014 and 2024, across 27 African countries (including Benin, Burkina Faso, Botswana, Congo, Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Gambia, Guinea, Kenya, Morocco, Madagascar, Mali, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sudan, Senegal, Togo, Uganda, Yemen, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe), FDA refusals for imported food products surged from 337 in 2014 to 515 in 2023. Alarmingly, in just the first 11 months of 2024, refusals more than doubled to 1,008. (Source: FDA Refusal Reports, FDA Import Refusals.) These figures highlight the increasing demand for food imports from emerging markets like Africa and the growing risks of unsafe products entering U.S. borders. For many overseas food and agricultural businesses, the United States represents a coveted market. However, the rise in exports also underscores the critical need to ensure these products meet stringent safety and quality standards. Establishing robust food safety systems early in the production and distribution process is essential to mitigate risks, protect public health, and facilitate access to the U.S. market. This proactive approach also generates significant cost savings and economic benefits for U.S. global trade partners, while fostering safer and more sustainable trade practices. To address these challenges, FES will develop a digital platform to deliver virtual training, disseminate critical information, and validate food safety practices. This system will equip food producers in emerging markets with the tools to implement global standards and successfully pass a full HACCP audit. By partnering with local in- country organizations, FES will provide these services at an affordable cost. Businesses will pay for the service, with FES collecting a small margin to maintain and update training materials and standards. Food producers that meet required adoption levels will be referred to global certification bodies, such as LRQA and EAGLE, which have expressed interest in collaborating with FES on this initiative. This innovative program will not only enhance the safety and quality of imported foods but also support the economic development of emerging markets by enabling food businesses to access lucrative export opportunities in the United States. Following Phase 1, the program will be expanded to other countries and scaled to serve more food companies seeking to export to the U.S. and other global markets.

Spring Clean Committee

SCIDpda in partnership with CIDBIA will host their 18th Annual Chinatown-ID Spring Clean on April 30, 2016 from 8am to 1pm. This event starting at 409 Maynard Ave S. will bring together volunteers from many local organizations and community members from Chinatown-ID community to work on cleaning up the neighborhood and assist small business owners with improvements to their businesses.

Friends of Small Business Saturday in Magnolia

to inform, educate and encourage the residents of Magnolia to shop at the small locally owned businesses

Friends of Block Party at The Station

Friends of Block Party at The Station will organize a music and arts festival showcasing South Seattle artists and small businesses (Block Party at The Station). It will be held on June 17, 2017, from noon to 8pm, along 16th Ave S, between S. Bailey and Roberto Maestas Festival Street. The festival will spotlight marginalized communities. A majority of festival performers will be women and LGBTQ artists of color. The festival will also showcase Beacon Hill as an immigrant community in order to challenge anti-immigrant narratives and rhetoric.

NHLBI - National Heart Lung and Blood Institute

PROJECT SUMMARY The most deadly type of heart attack, ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) involves blockage of the coronary artery and affects approximately 750,000 people annually in the US. While percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) saves lives by restoring blood flow to the ischemic heart, as much as half of the long-term damage to the heart is due to the reperfusion injury, for which there is no approved therapeutic shown to significantly reduce resulting cardiac infarct size. Larger infarcts are strongly associated with reinfarction, hospitalization with heart failure, and all-cause mortality. In the proposed Phase I SBIR Small Business Transition grant, Laborecom Therapeutics Inc. is developing a novel therapeutic peptide to reduce reperfusion injury. While other therapeutics have attempted to reduce reperfusion injury by direct immune suppression or reduction in mitochondrial stress, this approach targets a motor protein uniquely expressed in endothelial cells to prevent transendothelial migration. In aim 1, the therapeutic peptide will be optimized for stability, permeability, and plasma protein binding while maintaining therapeutic activity as measured by in vitro transendothelial migration assay. In aim 2, optimized peptides will be tested head-to-head in a mouse model of myocardial infarction for their ability to impact heart function as measured by echocardiogram and limit infarct size as measured by histopathology. The successful completion of these aims will result in an optimized lead candidate for further development through a Phase II award including IND-enabling studies and testing in a swine model of myocardial infarction. In addition to scientific research, under this transition award Laborecom Therapeutics will support the career development of Dr. Lucas Shores through a tailored career development plan. This will include entrepreneurial training through local and national programs, as well as direct mentorship from serial entrepreneurs and current executives at biotechnology companies to facilitate his transition to a career as an entrepreneur and independent investigator.

Toledo Public Library

The library will upgrade the community meeting room by adding technology and hardware to encourage new uses such as small business conferencing space and community education opportunities.

Friends of Small Business Saturday in Magnolia

The Magnolia Chamber of Commerce will engage the neighborhood to define a collective “Vision for Magnolia Village” and a set of actionable steps to help shape future development and growth.

NSF

Southeastern Community College (SCC), located in Whiteville, North Carolina, will collaborate with area high schools, businesses, and industry to prepare and employ skilled and highly qualified Electric Vehicle (EV) technicians to address the significant demand for skilled technicians to service and maintain EVs in North Carolina and across the nation. The proposed EV Technology curriculum, integrated with SCC’s existing automotive technology program, will offer traditional community college students, dual-enrolled high school students, and incumbent workers the opportunity to earn a certificate in EV Technology. In addition to providing students with an SCC degree or certificate, the project will collaborate with industry partners to connect students with work-based learning and apprenticeship opportunities that will significantly enhance student retention, completion rates, and job placement outcomes. This project is designed to address the growing demand for skilled EV technicians in the region and the nation with the achievement of the following goals: (1) Enhance SCC’s existing automotive program to create a dedicated EV technician pathway for students entering the workforce, and (2) Expand the college’s dual enrollment initiatives by partnering with the four local high schools to offer EV Technology coursework at their sites. Within the first two years of the EV Technology program's launch, at least 20 students are expected to be enrolled annually. To achieve these goals, SCC's automotive instructors will undergo training in EV technology, acquire and install EV equipment, and design a curriculum that aligns with the needs of local employers. Pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship opportunities will be integrated into the EV Technology curriculum, ensuring students gain practical experience. Additionally, high school automotive instructors will receive specialized training through summer workshops. Recruitment efforts will focus on all students at SCC using a multi-faceted approach to attract a diverse group of participants. Through these actions, the college will ensure participants are thoroughly prepared as highly qualified, career-ready EV technicians. The results of this project will serve as a model for other small, rural community colleges, providing a framework for them to prepare students for the expanding EV workforce. This project is funded by the Advanced Technological Education program that focuses on the education of technicians for the advanced-technology fields that drive the nation’s economy. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

National Science Foundation

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is announcing plans to renew this collection. In accordance with the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, we are providing opportunity for public comment on this action. After obtaining and considering public comment, NSF will prepare the submission requesting Office of Management and Budget (OMB) clearance of this collection for no longer than 3 years.

NIBIB - National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering

Project Summary/Abstract Internal hemorrhage is the second leading cause of death following trauma, with missed abdominal bleeding contributing to significant late-stage mortality and morbidity. Current diagnostic approaches, such as Focused Assessment with Sonography for Trauma (FAST) and computed tomography (CT), require trained personnel, are not portable, and provide only intermittent assessments. These limitations are particularly acute in field and pre-hospital environments, where rapid diagnosis and triage are critical, but expertise and imaging capabilities are limited or unavailable. This STTR Phase I project proposes to develop and evaluate a novel point-of-care diagnostic device based on electrical impedance tomography (EIT) that enables automated detection and monitoring of internal bleeding. The proposed system uses a compact array of electrodes and machine learning-enhanced imaging algorithms to provide real-time information on bleeding volume and rate. It is designed for immediate use by non-expert personnel and aims to support timely triage and transport decisions in both civilian and military trauma settings. Specific Aim 1: Optimize machine learning algorithms for accurate bleeding detection using reduced- sensor EIT arrays. We will train deep neural networks to mitigate movement and breathing artifacts and validate performance using a cadaver model capable of simulating realistic bleeding and respiratory motion. Specific Aim 2: Develop and test a candidate housing for the prototype device in volunteer firefighter subjects. We will evaluate sensor application, ease of use, and device performance in fluid monitoring scenarios, alongside feedback from users on form factor and usability. This project leverages the academic team’s extensive background in electrical imaging and the small business partner’s expertise in medical device development. Success in Phase I will establish the technical foundation and user requirements needed to advance to a Phase II effort focused on ruggedization, expanded clinical testing, and regulatory preparation. The long-term vision is to produce a lightweight, self-interpreting hemorrhage detection system that can be integrated into trauma workflows across EMS, battlefield, and rural settings—ultimately improving survival outcomes through earlier, more accurate identification of internal bleeding.

NSF

The growing demand for a motivated, well-trained STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) workforce in emerging and advanced technology fields requires attracting and retaining a broad pool of talented students. NSF’s ExLENT (Experiential Learning for Emerging and Novel Technologies) initiative addresses this need by supporting programs that use experiential learning to introduce participants to real-world, problem-solving experiences that build both knowledge and practical skills. However, the education and workforce sectors often operate in isolation, with limited overlap, collaboration, or systems-level thinking to support such integrated workforce development. To help bridge this gap, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) will organize two national forums—one in-person and one virtual—bringing together ExLENT grantees, business and industry leaders, and experts in experiential learning. These forums will allow grantees to learn from each other’s experiences, explore evidence-based strategies for supporting non-traditional learners, and build connections with potential employers in advanced engineering and technology sectors. The initiative will apply an “education ecosystem” approach, helping grantees recognize the broader landscape of organizations and policies that influence participants. By facilitating dialogue within the grantee community and between educators and employers, the NAE will promote collaboration and synergy across projects and sectors. The two proposed forums will bring together ExLENT awardees, business and industry leaders, and experts in experiential learning to identify levers of change for workforce development in emerging technologies. The first forum will focus on evidence-based strategies, peer learning, and relationship building. Approximately four months later, the second, virtual forum will reunite participants, along with additional system partners, to reflect on their experiences, assess the systems-approach framework, exchange lessons learned, and provide feedback on the effectiveness of the convenings as a means of fostering collaborations. The forums will feature informative and interactive sessions that will include a mix of presentations, panel discussions, demonstrations, hands-on training, case studies, role-playing, small-group discussions, and networking opportunities. Topic-specific facilitators will enhance the quality and impact of these engagements. The proposal’s theory of action is that applying systems engineering principles and outcomes—proven effective in other domains—can generate new insights that improve outcomes for ExLENT grantees. These forums may thus inspire participants to refine their projects based on shared knowledge and perspectives. The NAE will disseminate forum outcomes through selected videos, written summaries, publications in education and technical outlets, and other materials tailored for specific audiences. The ExLENT Program, supported by the NSF TIP and EDU Directorates, seeks to support experiential learning opportunities for individuals to increase their interest in and access to career pathways in emerging technology fields. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

Seattle Chinatown International District Preservation and Development Authority

Educate immigrant and refugee small business owners, youth volunteers, elders and other community stakeholders in the Chinatown/International District on how to use social media to improve economic development and to increase collaboration.

Seattle Griot Project

The Kwanzaa festival, held from December 29th to 31st at 2656 42nd Ave SW, Seattle, welcomes all with daily hours from 10 am to 7 pm. This free, 3-day public event prioritizes unity, self-determination, and cooperative economics within the Black community. Activities encompass small business showcases, enlightening financial literacy workshops, valuable tech training, cultural performances, and interviews for marketing. The event aims to empower, encourage entrepreneurship, bridge education gaps, and promote collaboration.

State Treasurer's Office

CPCFA acts as a conduit issuer in the transaction. The bonds are issued to raise capital for revenue-generating projects where the funds are used by the borrower to make payments to investors. The conduit financing is typically backed by either the borrower's credit or monies pledged to the project by outside investors. If the project fails and goes into default, it is solely the borrower's responsibility to repay the bondholders. Eligible Facilities The following types of projects are eligible for financing: Provides financing to California business, irrespective of company size, for the acquisition, construction or installation or qualified pollution control, waste disposal, and resource recovery facilities  Provides financing to California businesses that meet the size standards set forth in Title 13 of the Code of Federal Regulations or are an eligible small business, which is defined as 500 employees or less, including affiliates, for the acquisition, construction or installation of qualified pollution control, waste disposal, and resource recovery facilities. Final determination of eligibility is based upon opinion of Bond Counsel and Tax Counsel pursuant to Federal Tax Laws. Types of projects, which may qualify for tax-exempt bond financing, include: Curbside collection facilities, Recycling facilities, Composting facilities, Materials recovery facilities, Transfer station Landfills, Waste-to-energy facilities, Qualified solid waste or hazardous waste disposal projects Waste recovery facilities, Water Furnishing Facilities, Wastewater Treatment Facilities. Potential Uses of Bond Proceeds: Buildings and equipment Machinery and furnishings Land Costs of architects, engineers, attorneys and permits Costs of bond issuance Federal Eligibility Requirements Restrictions on use of proceeds: 95% of proceeds must be used for the defined project 2% of bond proceeds can be used for costs of issuance 25% of bond proceeds can be used for land costs in certain cases A public Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act (TEFRA) hearing must be held before the bonds are issued To acquire an existing building, a minimum of 15% of the bond proceeds must be used to renovate the building The average life of the bond issue cannot exceed 120% of the weighted average of the estimated useful life of the assets being financed. Prospective borrowers should contact bond counsel to help determine if a proposed project qualifies under federal law. Financing is performed in conjunction with allocation from the California Debt Limit Allocation Committee (CDLAC). The allocation is required by federal tax law for private activity tax-exempt bonds to be issued. CPCFA Fees: Application Fee: .0005 (1/20 of 1%) of total application amount, not to exceed $5,000. Payable with initial application.  Administrative Fees: .002 (2/10 of 1%) of total amount of bonds issued utilizing volume cap allocation, minus the application fee. Please see the CPCFA Bond Program website for additional fees which may apply to the financing.  

NSF

Digital fabrication uses computer-controlled machines like 3D printers to make objects. These machines can improve how individuals and small companies make products by increasing the speed and precision of making products while reducing the costs and labor compared to typical ways of manufacturing. The current ability of digital fabrication to support many kinds of manufacturing is limited by how existing equipment performs when run in an automated mode. Designers and manufacturers rely on techniques for making products that are specific to domains and materials. Their techniques often require combining automatic and manual operations. However, current digital fabrication technologies enforce the same ways of operating regardless of domain or material. The machine control methods limit operators to setting machine instructions in advance and responding to machine errors. These methods prevent operators from applying their domain knowledge or manual skills in the fabrication process and keep them from using digital fabrication with their existing way of making things. This project aims to enable experts to use digital fabrication technologies in powerful domain-specific workflows. The project will investigate new machine control methods and software design techniques that blend precise automated ways of making products with an expert controlling the machine by hand. This research will create new business opportunities by allowing domain experts to adapt digital manufacturing processes to the making of their products. This project will also help users tailor digital fabrication machines to their specific needs, which will lead to new products and materials, as well as new types of digital fabrication. This project will establish domain-specific computer-numerical control (CNC) toolpath abstractions, computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software interfaces, CNC machine architecture, and collaborative engineering methodologies for building cross-domain digital fabrication technologies for professional practice. Prior research has examined novice-oriented digital fabrication technologies focusing on high-level design specification and entirely automated fabrication practices or separate efforts in interactive digital fabrication interaction. To date, research in digital fabrication lacks a systematic investigation of the relationship between CNC machine mechanisms, control architecture, CAM toolpath design, and operation paradigms that blend automated and manual control. The investigators will conduct a comparative analysis of the practices of contemporary product designers and manufacturers who produce either manually or digitally fabricated products in low volume. The investigators will use insights on the barriers that practitioners from different domains face in the manufacturing workflow to inform the development of CNC control methods that enable creators to safely and efficiently reconfigure CNC machines to build new products. The investigators will pair the development of new CNC engineering techniques with the investigation of CAM design technologies that allow practitioners to precisely control machine behavior, coordinate machining operations with manual intervention, and understand and predict the fabrication workflow. The investigators will integrate their research with an education agenda that spans higher education and secondary public school education aimed at engaging students in computer science and entrepreneurial learning through applying digital fabrication to produce functional products. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF

The ability of humans to listen and converse in noisy places like bustling city streets or busy bars, is remarkable but also mysterious. How are listeners able to extract a clear signal from such loud background noise? The goal of this project is to try to understand how lower brain areas in the auditory pathway interact with higher auditory cortical areas in the brain when we try to communicate in acoustically challenging conditions. The lower parts of the auditory system, which are located in the brainstem and midbrain, process sounds and send information to higher level cortical areas to be analyzed and understood. The cortex also sends signals back down to the lower auditory centers—but the nature of these “top-down” signals and how they help us listen is not known. Remarkably, there are more top-down projections in the auditory system than “bottom-up” projections. This suggests that higher areas are shaping the incoming auditory information through these top-down projections. Understanding these top-down signals can help us understand why some people, even with normal hearing, struggle to understand what is being said to them when there is a lot of background noise. Untangling the role of these top-down signals can also inform our understanding of auditory perception and how much of it is driven by the external sounds out in the world, or shaped by internal information such expectation, or filtered by selective attention. In addition to the scientific goals, this project will include an integrated research, education, and outreach plan which will give high school students and undergraduates hands-on experiences in dynamic brain imaging as part of classes and summer outreach programs on auditory perception and auditory neuroscience. To deepen understanding of the role of the top-down projections, researchers will measure subjects’ brain activity using electroencephalography (EEG) while study participants listen to a variety of sounds including clicks, music and speech. The project will study how top-down attention affects subcortical auditory processing by playing two stories for subjects and asking them to attend to one of them, and then comparing the brain responses to the attended versus the unattended story. Researchers will also test how visual top-down signals affect subcortical auditory responses by comparing brain responses from subjects presented with recordings of speech where the video of the talker either matches the speech audio or is mismatched. Using a set of mathematical tools that model auditory processing called “encoding models,” it will be possible to analyze the contribution of top-down connections to help lower auditory areas to process the speech sounds. Researchers will take a big data approach and develop the next generation of encoding models by using a deep neural network approach to analyze massive amounts of brain data gathered from many EEG recordings of a small number of subjects over many weeks. This approach will give researchers more powerful tools to analyze aspects of auditory processing and attention. The use of these more sophisticated encoding models will illuminate the critical role lower auditory centers play in perception, reveal the strong impact of top-down signals on auditory perception, and more generally, the role that top-down signals play in all shaping perception from all sensory modalities. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF

Remanufacturing restores worn or damaged products to like-new performance, extending the life of high-value assets while reducing dependency on costly replacements and lowering supply chain vulnerability. Many repairs still depend on technician judgment that is difficult to document and is increasingly at risk as experienced workers retire faster than replacements can be trained. Although robots offer the potential to alleviate workforce shortages, today’s programmed automation is largely limited to repetitive operations and cannot replicate human-level reasoning and adaptability required to manage the unique geometries, uncertain damage states, and evolving conditions inherent to repair workflows. This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) project aims to create scientific and educational foundations for an integrated digital thread framework that enables autonomous, self-evolving cooperative robotic systems capable of additive repair. This project advances remanufacturing by moving from programmed automation toward cognitive automation, creating intelligent systems that leverage expert knowledge and continuously adapt to perform unique, customized operations across all remanufacturing steps. Further, this project will broaden participation through curriculum modules at the University of Connecticut, hands-on research and mentoring, summer programs with local schools and community colleges, and workforce development activities for manufacturers and small businesses. The overall research goal is to establish a mind-body-environment loop that integrates knowledge-based reasoning, physics-informed embodied interaction, and continuous environment-loop adaptation, to support adaptive repair actions and scalable deployment across emerging remanufacturing applications. Specific objectives include: (1) Develop a self-evolving, memory-augmented planning module to sense, diagnose, identify, and learn what processes are needed for the repair task, enabling generalizable context-aware reasoning. (2) Develop an embodied engine to decompose tasks, allocate subtasks to individual arms, optimize high degree of freedom motion plans, and execute non-planar slicing, ensure morphology-driven reconfiguration, and (3) Develop an adaptive digital twin for decision making based on multi-fidelity process data and physics-based simulation within a continuous environment loop, completing the mind-body-environment framework. Driven by the neuro-vector-symbolic architecture, this research integrates distributed sensory embeddings with structured symbolic knowledge, embodiment constraints and physics-based dynamics, and multi-fidelity simulation with experience-driven refinement. The resulting unified representation enables knowledge-driven reasoning, morphology-configured planning, and simulation-augmented adaptation. The system will be validated on multi-arm laboratory experiments and industrial case studies that include both reconstruction of damaged parts and modification to new specifications. This research advances foundational knowledge at the convergence of cognitive intelligence, embodied robotics, and advanced remanufacturing. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

Cascade Neighborhood Council

The Cascade Recycled Arts Project is being led by an emerging group of low income residents and small businesses that wish to become a resource for participation in arts and cultural events in the Cascade neighborhood. Planned activities include a boat sailing in June, participation in National Night Out in August, summer movie nights, and a 'Snowflake Fest' in December. The group will also host a series of bi-monthly, arts and cultural, events in the park that will encourage and incorporate the theme of upcycling and recycling.

Hip Hop is Green

Hip Hop is Green will host the first annual, free-of-cost, Cherry Street Block Party: a one-day community celebration on September 6, 2025 on East Cherry Street between 24th and 26th Avenues. The purpose of the Cherry Street Block Party is to build community and social cohesion for local organizations, artists, chefs, and small businesses who focus on uplifting and empowering Black and Brown families in Seattle’s Central District. The CD is Seattle’s historically Black neighborhood and has faced ongoing waves of gentrification. Luckily, there is a growing community movement to reclaim the CD as a hub for Black culture and resilience. Hip Hop is Green will produce the event, working collaboratively with a roster of 16+ partner organizations. Programming will include food demos and samples, wellness workshops, booths with information about community programs, and live performances. This project will be completed by October 31, 2025.

Salamanca

Small Business

NSF

Traditional Hunger Relief Organizations (HROs) have gaps in their ability to serve food-insecure households, operating from a limited number of locations and for limited hours, and often relying on purchased food that doesn’t directly reduce local food waste. Micro-pantries are small, decentralized, unattended, shared food pantries and fridges that allow local residents and businesses to donate food within their own neighborhoods. Despite their growing popularity, little is known about how much food is distributed through micro-pantries, how many individuals use them, and the safety and quality of food supplied. Consequently, HROs are reluctant to leverage this vast network of satellite micro-pantries, and local health departments have valid food safety concerns. Through a Stage 1 planning grant, we mapped 275 existing micro-pantries in the greater Seattle area, developed and tested a low-cost modular sensing platform to provide reliable data on micro-pantry usage and food safety, and conducted user engagement research. Through a first deployment, we estimated more than 4 million pounds of food being distributed in a year through the entire micro-pantry network in the study area of Seattle. While many different types of stakeholders use micro-pantries—including owners, donors, and recipients—they lack a system for centralized information-sharing. The current project aims to assess at scale whether a cyber-physical network of connected shared micro-pantries can complement HROs as a reliable and efficient system for hyper-local food redistribution while allowing for localized reduction of food waste. Our multi-disciplinary team of experts in urban logistics, supply chain, wireless sensor technology, food safety, and public health will collaborate with a national recycling company, public jurisdictions, and HROs to (1) deploy at scale modular, low-cost, wireless sensor platforms to gather and communicate data on micro-pantry usage and food safety conditions; (2) create a centralized information and communication system for micro-pantries donors and recipients; and (3) assess the potential to improve the safety and quality of food donated through micro-pantries, working with the state health department to establish best practices. This research and action project will advance knowledge of how civic-engaged research on sensor and information-sharing technologies can be rapidly designed and piloted to support hyper-local food redistribution, reduce inefficiencies and food waste, and enhance community access to safe, high-quality food. This research will provide a valuable, first-of-its-kind, formal study of micro-pantries as a potential solution to address food security and food waste at the neighborhood level, seeking to close gaps in traditional food rescue and distribution. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF

City centers nationwide are rapidly evolving from a traditional downtown into a vibrant “Central Activity District.” Yet, city leaders, small businesses, and residents lack timely, trustworthy data on how people move through and experience these public spaces. This pilot project will convert existing security cameras into privacy-preserving “urban intelligence sensors.” Instead of transmitting recognizable faces, each camera’s video is processed on a small computer installed on-site, where people are represented only as anonymous motion heatmaps. The resulting insights, crowd-flow patterns, congested walkways, accessibility barriers, and potential safety risks will be shared in real-time with planners, shop owners, event venues, and the public through dashboards and mobile alerts. A strong partnership among UNC Charlotte, Charlotte Center City Partners, Central Piedmont Community College, Law Enforcement, and a network of local businesses ensures the work is co-designed with the very communities it serves. By demonstrating that advanced AI can be deployed ethically, transparently, and with measurable civic benefit, the pilot offers a replicable model for safer, more walkable downtowns nationwide. The pilot will make fundamental Artificial Intelligence and Computer Vision innovations that transform raw pixels into high-dimensional thermal “motion tokens,” enabling accurate detection of trajectories, dwell times, queue lengths, and anomalous behaviors without storing personally identifiable information. An online active-learning framework, reinforced by feedback from security staff and site managers, continuously adapts detection thresholds to the unique rhythms of college campuses, art venues, entertainment arenas, retail corridors, and nightlife districts. Real-time statistics are fused into spatial heatmaps, crowd-density graphs, and occupancy forecasts, which are served to stakeholders via a web dashboard and mobile app. Statistical modules aggregate foot traffic trends to guide lighting schedules, signage placement, staffing decisions, and public safety interventions. Research outcomes will include validated algorithms, open latent-motion datasets, and evidence-based policy recommendations, advancing urban informatics, responsible AI, and edge computing while establishing a scalable blueprint for AI-assisted city planning across the United States. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF

The North San Joaquin Valley Regional Innovation Translation Ecosystem (NSJV-RITE) project focuses on using the region’s strengths in areas including agriculture, advanced manufacturing, and clean energy to support bigger goals across the country. Its purpose is to create new jobs, help small businesses grow, and give more people access to education and job training. By bringing together local businesses, universities, and community resources, NSJV-RITE aspires to turn good ideas into real-world solutions that make life better for local residents and show how communities can lead the way in building a stronger, more innovative economy. The project aligns with major regional efforts, including the North Valley THRIVE economic development initiative and a Collaborative which is advancing circular bioeconomy technologies. NSJV-RITE will evaluate institutional resources across two predominantly undergraduate institutions; develop shared protocols and technical service packages; and work with industry partners to refine offerings in advanced manufacturing, circular bioeconomy, and other key sectors. The initiative will also establish structured, long-term collaborations with external partners and strengthen the region’s capacity for applied research. Through continuous evaluation, improvement, and shared learning, NSJV-RITE will deliver a scalable model for regional innovation that drives economic development and enhances national competitiveness. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF

PRIMER – the PRimarily undergraduate Institution Management Excellence in Research program - will develop a new model for post-award training to advance the research enterprise at primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs). PRIMER aims to upskill research administrators so they can better assist researchers in more successfully managing their awards. PRIMER will leverage the Colleges of Liberal Arts Sponsored Programs (CLASP) community, representative of 1,921 public and private PUIs, to test and validate a relational model for strengthening grants management including stage-by-stage support structures, training modules, compliance coaching, and a resource repository. The resource repository will be a searchable, open-source platform for training materials and post-award templates, collaboratively conceived and designed to share institutional knowledge within and across participating institutions. The repository will be permanently housed as a University of South Florida Digital Commons collection. The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) serves as the initial development site for the PRIMER model that will then be adapted and scaled through the CLASP community, with 12 pilot sites providing baseline and preliminary data to inform studies of impact at scale at 30 demonstration sites. Training modules will address topics of grant accounting, compliance, reporting and data management for post-award research administrators. The modules will enable quick upskilling through stackable micro credentials to improve the quality of grants management and increase the pipeline to research administration careers. PRIMER will publish detailed case studies of the implementation of the model at TCNJ and other CLASP institutions, which can serve as a starting point for rural colleges, non-profits, small businesses, private research laboratories, and local education agencies. The adoption of the PRIMER model will improve award management and support increased institutional research activities by producing a better trained workforce to support the research enterprise. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.