Proposers Day: Protein Palace

DARPA will host an in-person Proposers Day in support of the Protein Palace program on Nov. 17, 2026, from 9 a.m. - 4 p.m. ET. The event will be held at the Executive Conference Center, 4075 Wilson Blvd. Suite 300, Arlington, Virginia.

DARPA anticipates releasing the Protein Palace solicitation prior to Proposers Day. If released, the Protein Palace solicitation will be made available at sam.gov. 

The goals of the Proposers Day are to:

1. Introduce the science and technology community (industry, academia, and government) to the Protein Palace program vision and goals
2. Facilitate interaction between researchers with capabilities and interests relevant to the Protein Palace program goals
3. Collect questions during the event that DARPA may answer and make available in a Question and Answer document maintained at https://www.darpa.mil/research/programs/protein-palace
4. Encourage and promote teaming arrangements among organizations that have the relevant expertise, research facilities, and capabilities for executing research and development responsive to the Protein Palace program goals. 

The Proposers Day will include overview presentations by government personnel and opportunities for team building among the participants.

Program objective

The objective of the Protein Palace program is to enable the rapid purification of virtually any protein with high specificity, purity, and yield. 

To achieve this goal, Protein Palace will break the traditional tradeoff between generalizability and specificity by leveraging dynamic chemical and physical approaches that probe the physicochemical variations of a protein rather than relying on its bulk surface properties or rigid, predefined binding pockets and affinity tags.