Ideas Under Incubation

Information Innovation Office (I2O)

• AI FORGE: Fostering Research and Growth in Emerging Artificial Intelligence
  In partnership with the U.S. National Science Foundation, AI FORGE aims to establish an industry/university/government consortium on AI research focused on solving AI critical challenges for national security. The goal is to accelerate adoption by industry and federal agencies. | Contact Program Manager Matthew Marge

Microsystems Technology Office (MTO)

• Cryogenic cooling for future computation
  What practical and affordable cryogenic refrigeration approaches and techniques are possible to realize potential future computational approaches? What alternatives can be considered? | Contact Program Manager Yogendra Joshi
   
• Energy storage to replace batteries
  How would you conceive of, and domestically produce, stored energy sources with the same or better performance of today’s batteries while avoiding the constraints of current form factors and materials through malleability; conformability; tailorable size, shape, capacity, and/or endurance? | Contact Program Manager Thomas Schratwieser
   
• Enhanced Microsystems
  What are the challenges, potentially new approaches, and anticipated impacts of chemical and biological interactions with microsystems so that microsystems not only survive chemically and biologically harsh treatments but are enhanced by them? | Contact Program Manager Huanan Zhang
   
• Increase Complexity of Inorganic Materials
  What are the materials, properties, processes, and controls necessary to create new inorganic materials with precise composition and structural accuracy to support the development of advanced microsystems? | Contact Program Manager Huanan Zhang
   
• Inverse design methodology
  What are the inverse design approaches and algorithms that can be used to overcome the sequential design process for conventional microelectronics system integration, which generally precludes optimization across all packaging levels? | Contact Program Manager David Meyer
   
• Living microsystems for computing, sensing, and control
  Recent demos of fungal mycelia interfacing with robots open possibilities for living microsystems over conventional computing for control, communications, and sensing. What are fungi’s limits as control elements? Are interfaces a barrier? Can fungi be trained, grown, and propagated? | Contact Program Manager Julian McMorrow
   
• Low-loss high permeability and permittivity materials
  Are there novel materials with high permeability and high permittivity that allow dynamic control to radically change the capability of traditional capacitors, transformers, circuit substrates, electrically small antennas, and other components? | Contact Program Manager Jonathan Hoffman
   
• Low-SWaP, high bandwidth HF-UHF antennas/receivers
  As lower frequency electromagnetic waves typically require large antennas and receive systems, are there novel quantum, photonic, or even classical approaches that can dramatically reduce the size, weight, and power (SWAP) and improve sensitivity over the current state of the art? | Contact Program Manager Jonathan Hoffman
   
• Lunar Manufacturing Infrastructure, Energy Generation and Storage
  A lunar economy will require in-situ resource utilization of lunar-abundant materials. What are the challenges and opportunities in isolating and purifying critical elements from regolith? Can these technologies scale for manufacture? Which energy solutions best suit a lunar environment? | Contact Program Manager Julian McMorrow
   
• Medical Microsystems
  How could internal treatment be administered (such as stopping internal bleeding) without surgery through focused, non-invasive energy delivery with microsystems assisting biological processes? | Contact Program Manager Huanan Zhang
   
• Microelectronics advanced packaging
  What approaches can be applied to overcome the three-dimensional integrated circuit multi-physics design challenges that consider the co-design of electrical, thermal, and mechanical properties while reducing volume and increasing packing density? | Contact Program Manager David Meyer
   
• Microelectronics black start
  Which technologies enable, or challenges hinder, the rapid black-start reconstitution of a new microelectronics manufacturing capability? Can existing supplies be repurposed while capacity is built? Can a clean-slate capability replace traditional with unconventional microsystems? | Contact Program Manager Julian McMorrow
   
• Multi-material class integration for microelectronics
  What are the novel ways to exploit opportunities and overcome challenges when additively integrating disparate material classes and materials with diverse deposition and compliance requirements, yet still maintaining flexibility with close proximity 3D placement? | Contact Program Manager David Meyer
   
• Quantum and photonic backend processing
  Can quantum and integrated photonic technologies dramatically change sensor backend or receiver designs by replacing analog to digital converters, enabling analog processing, improving tunability, and other functions? | Contact Program Manager Jonathan Hoffman
   
• Sequence defined polymer synthesis with molecular machines for microsystems applications
  What approaches, platforms, and systems could enable synthesis of sequence-defined polymers (e.g., novel synthetic methods and/or molecular machines)? What DOD applications might such macromolecules unlock for catalysts, optical materials, textiles, and microsystems manufacturing?  | Contact Program Manager John Hoffman
   
• Very large-scale photonic integrated circuits (VLPI)
  What are the automated design tools, co-designed natively-optical algorithms and architectures that can produce future VLPI circuits? How can these platforms achieve revolutionary new commercial and military capabilities that surpass what can be done by current electronic-based platforms? | Contact Program Manager Anna Tauke-Pedretti