National Science Foundation

TruSpin uses a breakthrough A/C electrospinning process to affordably mass-produce compositions of nanofibers that are difficult or impossible to make using pre-existing methods. Right now, TruSpin is using these nanofibers as an additive to the chemicals that go inside batteries for a tremendous increase in energy density.

Ossillate is a security testing platform focused on open-source software, founded in 2020 and based in Auburn, Alabama. The company's platform assists developers in evaluating and managing cybersecurity and operational risks associated with open-source dependencies in their software supply chain. By providing tools for identifying malicious, vulnerable, and unwanted code, Ossillate enables developers to safely adopt pre-vetted third-party code, thereby facilitating the creation of secure digital products and services.

Nanoxort, founded in 2018 and based in Auburn, Alabama, specializes in developing diffusive magnetic fractionation (DMF) technology that allows precise control over the properties of magnetic nanomaterials. This innovative technology is particularly significant in the healthcare sector, as it enhances contrast agent injections for patients undergoing MRI scans. By improving image resolution, Nanoxort's technology reduces the toxic effects associated with traditional MRI contrast agents, particularly gadolinium, which poses risks for individuals with compromised kidney function. Consequently, Nanoxort's advancements contribute to safer imaging practices, minimizing gadolinium exposure for patients who require frequent MRI procedures.

AI Metrics, LLC, based in Birmingham, Alabama, specializes in artificial intelligence and imaging solutions aimed at enhancing workflows and reporting in clinical practices and trials. Founded in 2019, the company develops advanced imaging software that aids radiologists in measurement and reporting tasks. Its technology focuses on improving the efficiency and value of radiologists by providing robust data and consistent output for patient care and research. The software includes an image viewing platform and cancer workflow tools that track responses of non-target lesions and image findings, facilitating data-driven insights and effective communication through graphical reports.

Cloud services have become ubiquitous to all major 21st century economic activities. However, cloud services and technologies can be significantly more powerful than they are now. A persistent barrier to further advancement has been the lack of a large-scale and open cloud research platforms. With funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Chameleon project will provide such a large-scale platform to the open research community allowing them explore transformative concepts in deeply programmable cloud services, design, and core technologies. Chameleon will allow users to explore problems ranging from the creation of Software as a Service to kernel support for virtualization. This broad range of supported research includes many other areas such as developing Platforms as a Service, creating new and optimizing existing Infrastructure as a Service components, investigating software-defined networking, and optimizing virtualization technologies. The Chameleon testbed, will be deployed at the University of Chicago and the Texas Advanced Computing Center and will consist of 650 multi-core cloud nodes, 5PB of total disk space, and leverage 100 Gbps connection between the sites. While a large part of the testbed will consist of homogenous hardware to support large-scale experiments, a portion of it will support heterogeneous units allowing experimentation with high-memory, large-disk, low-power, GPU, and co-processor units. The project will also leverage existing FutureGrid hardware at the University of Chicago and the Texas Advanced Computing Center in its first year to provide a transition period for the existing FutureGrid community of experimental users. To support the broad range of experiments experiments described above, the project will support a graduated configuration system allowing full user configurability of the software stack, from provisioning of bare metal and network interconnects to delivery of fully functioning cloud environments. A special feature of Chameleon is that it provides for an exceptionally close integration of clouds and networks, which substantially enhances the capabilities of both. In addition, to facilitate experiments, Chameleon will support a set of services designed to meet researchers needs, including support for experimental management, reproducibility, and repositories of trace and workload data of production cloud workloads. The project is led by the Computation Institute at the University of Chicago and partners from the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas at Austin, the International Center for Advanced Internet Research at Northwestern University, the Ohio State University, and University of Texas at San Antonio, comprising a highly qualified and experienced team. The team includes members from the NSF supported FutureGrid project and from the GENI community, both forerunners of the NSFCloud solicitation under which this project is funded. Chameleon will also form a set of partnerships with commercial and academic clouds, such as Rackspace, CERN and Open Science Data Cloud (OSDC), and will partner with other testbeds, notably GENI and INRIA's Grid'5000 testbed.

JAQ Energy develops energy and powers electronic system technologies. The company was founded in 2017 and is based in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.