DARPA invites potential proposals for future programs
NewsMay 01, 2017
ARLINGTON, Va. The Defense Sciences Office (DSO) of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) -- an office that identifies and pursues high-risk, high-payoff research initiatives across a broad spectrum of science and engineering disciplines -- has announced that it will host Discover DSO Day (D3) on June 15 with the aim of sharing research concepts and engaging with potential proposers to gain new insights for possible future programs.
DSO says that the event is intended to familiarize potential proposers with its mission, research areas of interest, and business processes pursued by the DSO.
Bill Regli, DSO acting director, said that “DSO is interested in creating scientific revolutions. Disruptive ideas often appear in the spaces between traditional disciplines, or at the fringe of what we think is possible. If we can identify such new phenomena, we may be able to use science to understand them and translate them into new national-security capabilities and tangible products for the nation.”
DSO program managers are developing program concepts in the following areas: Complexity Engineering, with topics of interest including complex sensing networks to protect city and metropolitan areas from chemical and biological threats and new concepts in wargaming and conflict simulation; Science of Design, which studies processes and methods of design, with topics of interest relating to the creation of novel optics with metamaterials, strategies for building cameras that can capture more photonic degrees of freedom, digital representations of engineering information that can anticipate failure and merge with other designs, and mathematical optimization and its use in design; Noosphere, which creates, measures, and models foundational questions regarding humans, human-machine interactions, and society; and Fundamental Limits, which creates, measures, and models foundational questions of nature.
The format for D3 includes four types of sessions: DARPA University, designed to provide those new to DARPA a clear set of directions and guidance for working with DSO, including navigating the DARPA proposal process; Technical Short Courses, in which program managers will describe their current thinking in different research areas, and audience members will be able to ask questions and offer insights; Sidebar Discussions with Program Managers, which are invitation-only sessions where individuals whose executive summaries were selected under previously released Special Notice SN-17-29 will discuss their ideas with a program manager; and Potential Proposers’ Poster Session, during which selected attendees will describe advanced capabilities and present recent selected findings to the DSO community.
A special notice with details and registration instructions is available here.
