Full Proposals are due by 4:00PM ET, February 5, 2010
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency often selects its research efforts through the Research Announcement (RA) process. The RA will appear on the Grants.gov website http://www.grants.gov/. The following information is for those wishing to respond to the RA.
The DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA) program will identify and engage rising research stars in junior faculty positions in academia and expose them to Department of Defense (DoD) needs and DARPA’s program development process. The YFA program will provide high-impact funding to these rising stars early in their careers in order to develop their research ideas in the context of DoD issues. The long term goal is to develop the next generation of academic scientists, engineers, and mathematicians in key disciplines who will focus a significant portion of their career on DoD and National Security issues.
This RA solicits single investigator proposals for research and development in the areas of the Physical Sciences, Engineering, and Mathematics of interest to DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO) and Microsystems Technology Office (MTO), and Social Sciences of interest to DARPA’s Transformational Convergence Technology Office (TCTO) as described in the topic list below. Proposed research should focus on innovations that will enable revolutionary advances in the selected topic area. High-risk/high-payoff ideas are strongly encouraged. Thus proposals that offer only incremental advances over state of the art will be deemed nonresponsive to this RA.
This solicitation is limited to participation by young investigators as defined in the Proposer Eligibility, Section III.
This solicitation seeks proposals for a 24 month research activity consisting of a 12 month base period and a 12 month option period, with a maximum funding level of $150K per each 12 month period ($300K maximum total funding).
The proposal should clearly describe the problem being addressed, the current state-of-the-art, new insights to address the problem, a credible research plan and schedule, and critical milestones to be pursued over each 12 month funding period.
During the 12 month base period, a number of visits/exercises at a variety of military sites and facilities will be scheduled. These briefings and visits will provide YFA recipients a unique, first-hand exposure to our war fighters, current DoD technologies in the field, and issues being faced by the Services in execution of their missions. It is expected that YFA recipients will participate in a subset of the visits/exercises made available to them. Participation in all such opportunities is not a requirement. However, lack of participation may impact the execution of the follow-on option period. Proposers are expected to include funds for such visits within the total budget of their proposal.
The proposals will be reviewed by panels of Government experts. The proposal review process is expected to be very competitive and highly selective.