Research NewsletterIssue: ORN-2024-15

DARPA Commercial Accelerators

This synopsis is issued by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for information and planning purposes and to allow industry the opportunity to submit questions, as well as promote competition.

Since 1958, DARPA has held to a singular and enduring mission: To make pivotal investments in breakthrough technologies for national security. Ensuring that the technology developed under DARPA programs make a lasting positive impact requires technology transition to the Department of Defense (DoD), the U.S. Government, Allied Partners, and the commercial sector. 

The mission of DARPA’s Commercial Strategy is to accelerate DARPA’s R&D technology into future products, services, and capabilities for both the DoD and commercial markets, thus providing rapid transition program opportunities by:

• Tapping into top tier commercial and entrepreneurial talent.
• Leveraging existing regional business and economic development ecosystems with domain expertise of relevance to both DoD and commercial customers.
• Connecting DARPA-funded teams with non-adversarial private investment capital and U.S. corporations.
• Providing additional training, mentoring, coaching, techno-economic market mapping, financial analysis, deal sourcing, and early-stage company building (pre-seed).
• Leveraging unique regional capabilities, including universities, labs, and demonstration sites.
• Developing strategies and approaches to de-risk the highest market inefficiencies that prevent DARPA-funded technologies from transitioning.
• Ensuring DARPA technology that secures economic and national security is available in the future, with zero adversarial capital.
• Addressing and de-risking the highest market inefficiencies that prevent DARPA-funded technologies from transitioning.

Commercial Strategy intends to achieve these goals by conducting the foundational entrepreneurial research required to design technologies of relevance and value to the market, formulate strong go-to-market strategies, and increase the likelihood that DARPA performers secure U.S. investment, grow domestically, and provide new capabilities for national defense.

The expertise and experience required to support DARPA’s Commercial Strategy programs and other transition activities include:

• Early-stage company building (pre-seed, seed, Series A), entrepreneurial training, translational research, venture investment deal sourcing, evaluation and execution of deals, and licensing agreement drafting and negotiation.
• A broad network relevant to transitioning technology to U.S. Government users such as systems integrators, testing and evaluation labs, and U.S. Government acquisition programs.
• A broad network of high-tech private equity or venture capital investors, to conduct due diligence in identifying investors and corporations whose association with the transition of DARPA technologies could be problematic to national security.

A DARPA presentation is posted on (Commercial_Accelerators_vF_3.25.24.pdf )

NSF: Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation; Centers of Research Excellence in Science and Technology - Research Infrastructure for Science and Engineering; Foundations for Digital Twins as Catalyzers of Biomedical Technological Innovation; Data Science Corps; Mathematical Foundations of Digital Twins; Focus on Recruiting Emerging Climate and Adaptation Scientists and Transformers

NIH: Undergraduate Research Training Initiative for Student Enhancement (U-RISE) (T34); NIH Director’s Transformative Research Awards (R01)

Department of Defense/US Army/DARPA/ONR: Office of Naval Research Science and Technology for Advanced Manufacturing Projects (STAMP); DoD Spinal Cord Injury Research Program Investigator-Initiated Research Award; Air Force Fiscal Year 2025 Young Investigator Program (YIP)

Department of Energy: FY2024 Vehicle Technologies Office Research & Development Funding Opportunity Announcement; FY 2024 Funding for Accelerated, Inclusive Research (FAIR)

NASA: MUREP INCLUDES; Early Stage Innovations; ROSES 2024: A.7 Biodiversity and Ecological Conservation; ROSES - 2024: Early Career Investigator Program and Other Solicitations

Private Foundations: Simons Foundation Neuroscience Collaborations Courses and Conferences Awards

Practical quantum computing is coming in 3 to 5 years, but will be cloud based, NSA official predicts: Practical quantum computing tools are about 3 to 5 years out from workforce use and will likely be accessed through cloud based environments, a top National Security Agency official predicted at a Tuesday Palo Alto Networks public sector cybersecurity event. Neal Ziring, the NSA’s cybersecurity directorate’s technical director, said that quantum computing systems — which use the laws of quantum mechanics to solve problems at an exponentially faster rate than traditional computers and are still largely theoretical — will likely be accessed via cloud computing platforms rather than on-premise installs, due to cost and practicality considerations. “Even if a government agency would be willing to have one quantum computer on-prem … I don't think they’re going to be willing to have multiple,” he said. The intelligence community faces many of the same data processing challenges as the civilian world, he said, noting that the NSA is “very wary of adding complexity where it’s not needed.” The cloud aspect would help users mesh together uses for both quantum computers and classical computers, known as hybrid computing, in which the computational elements of both systems are combined for problem solving. More information is posted on the NextGov website.

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US, EU update shared AI taxonomy, unveil new research alliance: The U.S. and European Union Trade and Technology Council have updated their repository of shared definitions of artificial intelligence terminology, as allied nations work to establish a shared understanding of how to securely leverage AI systems with a rights-centered approach.  After the sixth U.S.-EU TTC meeting held in Leuven, Belgium this past week, representatives from both governments found common ground on AI-related topics, announcing both an updated EU-U.S. Terminology and Taxonomy for Artificial Intelligence and continued AI-centric collaboration on Friday. The updated taxonomy includes 13 new terms and updates 24 terms from the first iteration of the document. New terms include data augmentation, knowledge representation, prompt, training data, AI system, data leakage, and deep fakes, among others. These updates follow external expert commentary based on the first edition, collected between Oct. 27, 2023 and Nov. 24, 2023.  Amended terms include trustworthy AI, model, neural network, human values for AI, human-centric AI, AI accuracy, machine learning, data poisoning and synthetic data. 

More information is posted on the NextGov website.

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DOD is looking to grow its marketplace for speedy acquisitions of innovative tech: The Department of Defense’s platform for fast-tracking the acquisition of innovative products and services is looking to scale up in 2024 and beyond, with officials working to sell the concept of the model across the department and with industry partners.  Overseen by the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office — or CDAO — the Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace describes itself as “DOD’s digital environment of postcompetition, readily awardable, 5:00 minute technology solution pitch videos.”  The marketplace evolved out of a contract that DOD’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, a precursor to CDAO, and the Army Contracting Command at Rock Island signed in February 2021 with what was then known as the Indiana Innovation Institute, with the goal of establishing an online ecosystem called Tradewinds to streamline the acquisition of artificial intelligence technologies.  In collaboration with CDAO, Tradewinds launched the marketplace in November 2022 to provide a platform for contract seekers to share their pitch videos for AI, machine learning and other innovative solutions. The platform is managed by the Applied Research Institute, which was formerly known as the Indiana Innovation Institute. If pitches from qualifying companies are deemed awardable and included in the marketplace, then the contract seekers’ video submissions are made accessible to DOD entities that also participate in the marketplace. More information is posted on the NextGov website.