DARPA Seeks Innovators to Create Revolutionary Tech for National Security

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DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO) is hosting Discover DSO Day (D3) in Chicago, April 23-24. The objective of the event is to connect DSO with the science and technology community in the Midwest to help generate world-leading technologies and capabilities for U.S. national security, which is critical to the Office’s mission of creating and preventing scientific surprise. D3 Chicago follows similar outreach events in 2024 to science and technology communities on the West and East Coast in San Francisco and Boston, respectively.

DARPA seeks to identify and pursue high-impact research initiatives across a broad spectrum of science and engineering disciplines to provide advanced capabilities for the Department of Defense. 

“At DARPA we don’t do incremental research; we only go after high-risk/high-reward projects that, if successful, would have transformational impact for DOD and our warfighters,” said DSO Director Bart Russell. “At D3 Chicago our program managers will share their perspectives and strategies for disruption in a variety of technical areas and lay out the critical challenges we need the tech community’s help to overcome. Each talk will be followed by a panel discussion of leading experts to flesh out the technical difficulties limiting progress in that particular area. By having a conversation on the panel and opening up that discussion to the audience, we can provide a much richer understanding to the attendees about what we’re really after and how they can be part of the solution.”

Program manager presentations and panel discussions over the two days will cover:

• The future of sensing, focused on opportunities and challenges in sensing (classical and quantum)
• New approaches and unique defense challenges to computation and processing 
• Enabling military operations in challenging environments, focused on resilience, reliability, and availability of capability for warfighters
• New approaches to energy and access, addressing logistical bottlenecks and sustained operations in extreme environments
• DSO’s streamlined contracting processes for faster tech innovation
• Breaking down barriers of entry for new performers to help DARPA develop the next groundbreaking solutions to transition to U.S. warfighters 
• Accelerating transition from bench to battlefield

The event will include a panel discussion with DARPA Innovation Fellows and a recipient of DARPA’s Young Faculty Award (YFA), as well as two poster sessions: one featuring several of the Fellows’ ARC topics and another poster session where program managers will present their technical areas of interest and engage with attendees.

Attendees also will learn about DARPAConnect, a free resource to help those new to DARPA navigate how to work with the agency.

Transitioning tech into the field and streamlining solicitations

DSO is focused on developing new pathways to more quickly transition technology breakthroughs demonstrated in the laboratory into real capabilities for U.S. warfighters in the field.

“We want to bridge the infamous ‘Valley of Death,’ where breakthrough technologies often go to die when there is no clear transition path either directly to the military Services through an existing program of record, or indirectly through commercialization,” Russell said. “We’re keenly focused on moving tech from the bench to the battlefield. A breakthrough on the lab bench may get you the cover of a prestigious science journal, which is great, but if it’s so exquisite that there’s no near-term viable path to apply that breakthrough to the warfighter, it’s not achieving our goal for the DOD. Perhaps we could take a slightly less exquisite version of the breakthrough demonstrated on the bench – which would still exceed current state of the art – and commercialize it more quickly for the military to purchase or transition it directly to the DOD as a military capability. 

“New at D3 Chicago we’ve added a dedicated panel session on creative ways to bridge this gap. A couple DARPA program managers will share how they came up with clever strategies to successfully position their work to go from fundamental research project to operational use, which is extremely hard.”

Another new addition to the Chicago event is a contracting panel covering the different mechanisms and types of research opportunities DARPA has developed in recent years to accelerate innovation and streamline the solicitation and contracting process. These efforts aim to make it easier for performers — especially small businesses who have never worked with DARPA or the DOD — to propose to DSO opportunities.