Tech Tidbits from Around New Hampshire

QUEL Imaging LLC, a venture spun out of Dartmouth Engineering, will be expanding its portfolio of tools for biomedical optical imaging with the help in part to a new $400,000 Small Business Innovation Research Phase I contract from the National Cancer Institute. The company said the award will enable it to develop bio-mimicking optical phantoms to advance development of fluorescence guided surgical imaging systems. QUEL was co-founded in 2019 by Thayer School of Engineering Professor Brian Pogue, left, Ethan LaRochelle, center, and Alberto Ruiz. The company is based in White River Junction, Vt.

Scrible, a San Mateo, Calif.-based research and writing platform for students, teachers and librarians, has announced a partnership with the New Hampshire Society for Technology in Education that aims to provide the state’s K-12 schools access to its software at a reduced price. NHSTE is a non-profit that works to improve education through the use of information technologies. It offers schools in New Hampshire and Vermont price savings on popular education technology. With the partnership, Scrible will be added to the society’s list of vendors, giving educators, schools and districts a discount on Scrible’s paid plans, Scrible Edu Teacher Plan, School Plan and District Plan.

TD Bank’s TD Charitable Foundation has awarded $40,000 to the New Hampshire Business Committee for the Arts to further develop its augmented reality art app, AR+ art. The grant will also fund exhibitions in collaboration with colleges, including Southern New Hampshire University, the Institute of Art and Design at New England College and University of New Hampshire. The augmented reality exhibitions will be rolled out next year and feature work by current students or alumni of each college. “The objective of our AR+ art: Elevating Artists in Augmented Reality Initiative is to provide emerging artists a brand new platform to exhibit and promote their artwork while showcasing great art programs around New Hampshire,” said Tricia Soule, executive director of the Business Committee for the Arts.

Great Bay Community College will be hosting an open house Nov. 20 aimed at helping to fill local workforce hiring needs through opportunities for education, training and career pathways in hands-on manufacturing and technical programs. The event at the Rochester campus, located at 5 Milton Road, will be held from 9 to 11 a.m. and is open to anyone interested in manufacturing and technical skills pathways, including businesses in need of workforce development opportunities. Earlier this year, GBCC launched four-week manufacturing training courses in Manufacturing Skills and Knowledge, Shop and Construction Math, Technical Blueprint Reading Fundaments and CNC Setup Operator Fundamentals. Courses will begin in January. To register or for more information click here.

New Hampshire Public Radio and the podcast company Stitcher have reached an exclusive national marketing agreement that includes the station’s most popular podcasts, including “Bear Brook,” “Civics 101,” “Outside/In” and Document. NHPR said Stitcher is positioned to introduce its podcast lineup to a broad, diverse national audience. The agreement is Stitcher’s first exclusive advertising and sales deal with a public media organization, it said. With the agreement, NHPR will be ramping up production of “Civics 101” from twice a month to weekly beginning in November. The station is also developing a new project reported and produced by the journalists who created Bear Brook.

BAE Systems has been awarded multiple development contracts from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to advance quantum technology and radio frequency sensing by addressing constraints in antenna designs. Leveraging quantum sensing can reduce size and increase sensitivity and accessible bandwidth by several orders of magnitude, BAE said. It said a quantum approach to aperture development decouples the size of the antenna from the wavelength of the incoming signal. That can reduce the size and number of antennas on Department of Defense platforms.