Breakthrough discoveries start with bold questions
Our Innovation Fellowship offers early-career scientists and active-duty service members the chance to pursue the answers.
Fellows serve for two years, developing and managing topics funded under our Advanced Research Concepts initiative. During the topic ideation process, Fellows work with program managers and other DARPA experts who serve as internal sounding boards. They engage closely with research performers to probe existing paradigms, question technological barriers, and push the state of the art through the science and technology efforts they manage.
Why apply?
An Innovation Fellowship is a crash course in DARPA's active portfolio management for science and technology development.
Fellows push the limits of existing technology. They lead the rapid exploration of promising new ideas. They tackle high-risk/high-reward questions and assess the potential impacts of further investment.
During their tenure, Fellows make extensive connections across an extraordinarily rich, technology-focused network. This includes DARPA program managers and research performers from leading universities, commercial firms, and non-profit R&D organizations.
For early-career civilians, the Innovation Fellowship offers valuable experience while maintaining the technical edge required to succeed in academia and other cutting-edge research labs. For military officers, it builds a strong understanding of the R&D community tasked with empowering our troops with the advantage of technological surprise, and it enables them to advocate for the needs of the services.
Eligibility and qualifications
The Innovation Fellowship is open to recent Ph.D. graduates (within five years of receiving a doctorate) and active-duty military with STEM degrees and five to 10 years of operational experience. In exceptional cases, we also consider bachelor’s or master’s level candidates in STEM programs.
Active-duty applicants should seek approval from their chain-of-command prior to applying. Upon acceptance into the program, we will work with applicants and their officer community managers to obtain orders.
Our ideal candidate has a strong technical background in their field, can think critically and creatively about big-picture challenges in science and technology innovation, and has aptitude for new scientific fields. Successful candidates also demonstrate excellent communication, teamwork, and scientific/technical writing skills.
The Innovation Fellowship is a salaried position. Fellows must be U.S. citizens and are expected to work at DARPA in Arlington, Va. Military participants remain on active duty.
