The Draper Scholars Program emphasizes empowering students in 16 key research areas to make the greatest impact. We encourage applicants to align their research with these topics.
Precision Sensors, Instrumentation, Advanced Materials
Draper’s core legacy inertial navigation offerings have drawn from our longstanding history of gyroscope and accelerometer technology innovation. From ultra-high performance electro-mechanical based instruments, to leading edge optical and miniature MEMS based sensors, Draper has developed, transitioned and deployed mission critical systems using a wide diversity of enabling sensor technologies. We continue to invest in emerging ideas to further sensor state-of-the-art to advance critical national mission capabilities.
Draper supports a broad array of application areas using advanced materials. From materials in navigational sensors, to packaging materials for extreme environments, to biological sensing molecules, materials are in everything. Draper's materials and chemistry work develops and applies solutions for next-generation devices and important mission areas.
Technical Point of Contact
Research Interests
MEMS Inertial Sensors
We seek advancements in Micro-Electro-Mechanical sensors for small form factor precision gyroscope and accelerometer designs:
- High performance gyros are particularly challenging to develop in miniature configurations because of square law sensitivity scaling. Is there a design architecture that minimizes that scaling problem?
- Emerging applications require very high dynamic range capabilities. Are there single transducer designs capable of satisfying that mission requirement?
- Promising instrument design architectures may require advances in MEMS fabrication processes. What might these look like, or conversely, how might next generation MEMS fabrication capability be exploited to develop novel instruments?
- High reliability and environmental hardness are often key sensor requirements. What advances in transducer fabrication and packaging are emerging to further enhance reliability and hardness?
Advanced Optical Gyroscopes
We seek advancements in optical gyroscope design to improve performance, reduce size weight and power and improve reliability and hardness:
- Like mechanically based gyros, high performance is challenging to achieve in optical gyros in miniature configurations. Would an optical resonator based rate sensing approach be superior to the conventional interferometric designs?
- Hollow core optical fiber offers potential performance and reliability improvements over conventional single mode fibers. What are the key attributes/parameters needed for rate sensing with hollow core fiber?
- What performance and/or reliability gains could be realized in optical gyros via introduction of emerging developments in very narrow linewidth optical sources, integrated optics modulators and photonic integrated circuits?
- How might quantum entanglement of optical states in an optical gyro be exploited?
- Frequency comb optical sources open up the possibility of multi-frequency probing of optical resonators. What advanced signal processing could be employed to furnish error compensation, noise reduction, etc. in a multi-frequency optical resonator gyro?
Advanced Materials
Draper is interested in the synthesis, development, characterization, and application of advanced and/or multifunctional materials. Some areas of particular interest include:
- Materials for harsh environments (e.g. space, underwater, high radiation, extreme temperature, high shock and vibration, harsh chemical environments, etc.)
- Custom adhesives or adhesives for harsh environments
- Additive manufacturing of novel materials
- Energetic materials
- Materials for next-generation sensors, such as materials for ultra-sensitive optical or pathogen detection, etc.
Have Any Questions?
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