Biological Technologies
Funding Agency:
- Department of Defense
BTO's mission is to develop capabilities that leverage the unique properties of biology –
adaption, replication, resilience and complexity, to revolutionize how the United States defends
the homeland and prepares and protects its warfighters. Research in BTO creates
biotechnological capabilities that provide tactical care and restore function to injured warfighters,
increase operational resilience, develop novel functional materials, and detect and protect against
threats to maintain force readiness.
BTO is interested in submissions related to the following topic areas:
General Topics:
Biological technology topic areas that fit the national security scope of BTO’s mission.
Research into market opportunities, constraints, and communities affecting financing and
commercialization of bioindustrial and biomedical technologies.
Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI):
Developing and advancing our understanding of the impact and principles underlying
biological data generation, assessment and incorporation into the biological foundation
models, or mixed-mode foundation models. This includes taking information theoretic
approaches as well as understanding the scaling laws of these data for various types of
models.
Advancing the capabilities of broad or narrow biological or mixed-mode foundation
models far beyond the state of the art.
Developing and proving non-experimental models or hybrid experimental/nonexperimental
assessment strategies for biological foundation model assessment.
Exponentially accelerating the time scale of biological system simulation from the
subcellular through multicellular, organismal and environmental systems.
Developing ML and AI-enabled technologies to improve the accuracy, precision, and
efficiency of warfighter decision-making in complex and dynamic environments (e.g., on
and off the battlefield).
The development of virtual testbeds, digital twins, and/or synthetic data to accelerate or
improve the predictive modeling of human performance.
Human Performance:
Understanding and improving treatment of and resilience in neurological health,
transformative neural processing, fatigue, cognition, and optimized human performance
and teaming, including in extreme conditions.
Discovering interventions that utilize biotechnology, biochemistry, molecular biology,
microbiology, neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, social and behavioral
science, and related disciplines to assess and optimize human performance and teaming
(e.g., trust).
Developing and leveraging technologies to advance continuous or near-continuous
monitoring of physiology to elucidate mechanisms of human readiness, cognitive status,
and resilience.
Understanding and improving interfaces between the biological and physical world to
enable seamless biohybrid systems and devices.
Developing approaches to enhance physiological resilience and performance in extreme
conditions (e.g., cold weather climates) or to reduce musculoskeletal injuries via
interventions that do not require genomic modifications.
Developing technologies for rapid assessment of psychophysiological status.
Materials, Sensors, Processing:
Designing novel materials, sensors, or processes that mimic or are inspired by biological
systems.
Creating tools such as foundation models or prediction engines to understand the
underlying rules defining biomolecular and biomaterial or hybrid biotic/abiotic material
structure/function properties (individual properties or groups of properties) in order to
predict desired outcomes for novel material development. Importantly, these predictions
should hold from the molecular scale to the macro scale.
Developing new computational and experimental tools and predictive capabilities for
engineering of biological systems, such as cells, tissues, organs, organisms, and complex
communities, to both develop new products and functional systems, as well as to gain
new insights into underlying mechanisms.
Developing technologies to leverage biological systems and enhance the acquisition and
maintenance of critical and strategic organic and inorganic materials.
Developing sustainable and controllable technologies that integrate biological systems
into the built environments.
Understanding and leveraging complex biological systems into underlying functional
rules and processes to provide models that govern interactions of biological systems from
biofilms to organs or ecosystems.
Developing new platform technologies that integrate, automate, and miniaturize the
collection, processing, and analysis via direct or indirect interrogation of biological and
chemical samples.
Developing hybrid biological/engineered systems that integrate biological organisms,
components, biologically-encoded circuitry, biogenic materials, or exploit biological
phenomena to surpass capabilities of abiotic equivalents.
Developing novel technologies to remotely sense, process, or analyze weak biological
signals occurring in the natural background environment.
Developing novel biological sensor platforms with reduced size, weight, and power
requirements of equivalent, electro-optical or electro-mechanical systems with orders of
magnitude increase in equivalent performance.
Ecosystem and Environmental:
Understanding emerging threats to global food and water supplies and developing
countermeasures that could be implemented on regional or global scales.
Developing and leveraging new insights into non-human biology across and between
populations, e.g., microbes, insects, plants, marine life, and how they interact with their
environment.
Leveraging biology to provide new tactical and strategic operational advantages,
concealment and camouflage approaches, and bio-inorganic capabilities.
Developing approaches using biology, biogeochemistry or materials science to mitigate
or sequester anthropogenic carbon dioxide, chemicals, and contaminants in terrestrial,
marine, and post-disaster environments.
Testing and validating new theories, methods and computational models that identify and
quantify factors and principles underlying collective and interactive behaviors of
biological organisms at all scales, from individual cells to complex ecosystems.
Developing technologies that leverage synthetic biology, living cellular systems,
ecological diversity, or properties of biology to support operations in extreme
environments and experimental methodologies to evaluate potential benefits of such
innovations.
Creating in silico or organically-based models, model systems, and/or tools that exceed
the naturally evolved pace of biological processes from chemistry, molecular genetics
and metabolomics, to microbial evolution and community building, to human systems.
Understanding the dynamics of population and ecosystem behavior to preserve
equilibrium, provide strategic opportunity, mitigate impacts, or avoid catastrophe.
Developing and leveraging new technologies for ecosystem restoration and the
stabilization of agricultural production and post-disaster recovery.
Biosecurity and Biosafety:
Developing new technologies and approaches that ensure biosafety and biosecurity of
biological hardware and data, as well as the safety and security of artificial intelligence
(AI) technologies that can accelerate the biological research and development process.
Developing innovative technologies that characterize novel, engineered, and/or natural
emerging pathogens to prevent their spread or understand their origin.
Developing new technologies to treat, prevent, forecast, and detect the emergence and
spread of infectious diseases that have the potential to cause significant health, economic,
and social burden.
Biomedical and Biodefense:
Understanding causal relationships that underlie acute and chronic disease states to
support warfighter health.
Developing new technologies for the rapid, automated, and resilient manufacturing,
delivery, and distribution of critical molecules for applications in therapeutics, chemical
and biological defense.
Developing new technologies to support next-generation cellular therapeutic applications.
Developing new platform technologies for targeted, effective, spatiotemporally controlled
delivery of large and small molecules and biologics.
Leveraging biotechnology to create new platform solutions that combat antimicrobial
resistance, generate novel drug and cell-based therapeutics, and treat warfighter injury
and illness.
Developing novel diagnostic, prophylactic, and therapeutic approaches for warfighter
injury that can be provided even in austere settings and extreme conditions.
Multiple awards on a rolling basis.
Proposals may be submitted on a rolling basis until September 10, 2025, at 4:00 PM ET.
Contracting Officer: Katie Freeman, DARPA/Contracts Management Office
o E-Mail: BTOBAA2024@darpa.mil
o Mailing Address:
DARPA/BTO
ATTN: HR001124S0034
675 North Randolph Street
Arlington, VA 22203-2114