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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 frontiers in math, computation and design, limits of sensing and sensors, complex social systems, and anticipating 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

Artificial Intelligence Exploration (AIE)

Accelerating the Exploration of Promising Artificial Intelligence Concepts

DARPA today announced its Artificial Intelligence Exploration (AIE) program, a key component of the agency’s broader artificial intelligence (AI) investment strategy aimed at ensuring the United States maintains an advantage in this critical and rapidly accelerating technology area. AIE will constitute a series of unique funding opportunities that use streamlined contracting procedures and funding mechanisms to achieve a start date within three months of an opportunity announcement.
Fast Lightweight Autonomy (FLA)

Faster, Lighter, Smarter: DARPA Gives Small Autonomous Systems a Tech Boost

DARPA’s Fast Lightweight Autonomy (FLA) program recently completed Phase 2 flight tests, demonstrating advanced algorithms designed to turn small air and ground systems into team members that could autonomously perform tasks dangerous for humans – such as pre-mission reconnaissance in a hostile urban setting or searching damaged structures for survivors following an earthquake.
Space Environment Exploitation (SEE)

Seeking 72-hour Space Environment Forecasts with Updates on the Hour

Models for providing hourly terrestrial weather forecasts anywhere in the world have become increasingly precise—our smartphones buzz or chirp with local alerts of approaching thunderstorms, heavy snow, flash floods, and big events like tornados and hurricanes. The military relies on accurate weather forecasts for planning complex operations in the air, on ground, and at sea.

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 Development for Platforms (MDP)

Dr. Jan Vandenbrande
Military platforms—such as ships, aircraft and ground vehicles—rely on advanced materials to make them lighter, stronger and more resistant to stress, heat and other harsh environmental conditions. Currently, the process for developing new materials to field in platforms frequently takes more than a decade. This lengthy process often means that developers of new military platforms are forced to rely on decades-old, mature materials because potentially more advanced materials are still being developed and tested, and are considered too large a risk to be implemented into platform designs. More
| Complexity | Manufacturing | Materials |

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 |