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Defense Sciences Office (DSO)

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DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO) identifies and pursues high-risk, high-payoff research initiatives across a broad spectrum of science and engineering disciplines and transforms them into important, new game-changing technologies for U.S. national security. Current DSO themes include accelerating scientific discovery, exploring fundamental limits, and creating strategic surprise. DSO relies on the greater scientific research community to help identify and explore ideas that could potentially revolutionize the state-of-the-art.

Useful links to work with DSO

Highlights

Nascent Light-Matter Interactions (NLM)

Developing “ABCs” for Exploiting New Phenomena in Light-Matter Interactions

A unique class of engineered light-manipulating materials, known as metamaterials or structured materials, makes use of patterns of strongly interacting wavelength or sub-wavelength-sized elements. Because of these intricate internal and surface structures, new properties have emerged, some exhibiting behavior that has resulted in rewriting long-understood “laws” for how light and other electromagnetic (EM) waves interact with materials. These materials have been opening up new options for controlling EM waves in many technological arenas, among them imaging, thermal control, and frequency conversion. Specific applications include night-vision, heat reflection and management in aircraft engines, and temperature regulation of electronics on satellites in the hot-and-cold extremes of space.
Young Faculty Award

Young Faculty Award 2018 Research Topics Announced

DARPA published its Young Faculty Award (YFA) 2018 Research Announcement today, seeking proposals in 26 different topic areas—the largest number of YFA research areas ever solicited.
Disruptioneering

Disruptioneering: Streamlining the Process of Scientific Discovery

DARPA’s Defense Sciences office (DSO)—whose mission is to identify and pursue high-risk, high-payoff research initiatives across a broad spectrum of science and engineering disciplines—today announced the first programs under its new Disruptioneering effort, which pushes for faster identification and exploration of bold and risky ideas with the goal of accelerating scientific discovery.

Tags

| Agency | Autonomy | Complexity | Fundamentals | Materials | Math | Sensors |

 

Opportunities

To view a selective listing of solicitations posted by this office please visit the DSO Opportunities page, where you can further sort by topic.

Programs

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Materials for Transduction (MATRIX)

Dr. Jim Gimlett
Transductional materials convert energy between different forms or domains, such as thermal to electrical energy, or electric field to magnetic field. More
| Electronics | Materials | SWAP |

Models, Dynamics and Learning (MoDyL)

Dr. Jan Vandenbrande
Complex, nonlinear, multiscale dynamical systems are ubiquitous. Examples include weather, fluids, materials, biological systems, communication networks, and social systems. These systems often evolve to a critical state built up from a series of irreversible and unexpected events, which severely limits development and implementation of mathematical models to accurately predict formation and evolution of patterns in such systems. More
| Complexity | Math |

Molecular Informatics

Dr. Anne Fischer
The Molecular Informatics program brings together a collaborative interdisciplinary community to explore completely new approaches to store and process information with molecules. Chemistry offers an untapped, rich palette of molecular diversity that may yield a vast design space to enable dense data representations and highly versatile computing concepts outside of traditional digital, logic-based approaches. More
| Chemistry | Data | Fundamentals | Processing |

Molecular Scaffold Design Collective (MSDC)

Dr. Anne Fischer
The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) develops and uses molecules and materials across a diverse range of areas including therapeutics, electronics, coatings, and fuels. Application areas with particularly unique relevance to national security, such as energetics, tend not to keep pace with the need for innovation and new performance characteristics. More
| Chemistry | Materials | Munitions | Opportunities |

Nascent Light-Matter Interactions (NLM)

Dr. Michael Fiddy
Recent advances in our understanding of light-matter interactions, often with patterned and resonant structures, reveal nascent concepts for new interactions that may impact many applications. Examples of these novel phenomena include interactions involving active media, symmetry, non-reciprocity, and linear/nonlinear resonant coupling effects. More
| Fundamentals | Materials | Microstructures | Photonics | Quantum | Thermal |