DARPA Young Faculty Award
Sponsor Deadline for Executive Summary(strongly encouraged): December 13, 2023, 4 PM EST
OSP Deadline: February 14, 2024. Departments or areas may require additional time for proposal review and submission. Please discuss a timeline with your grants administrator.
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposal: February 22, 2024, 4 PM EST
Award Amount: Each award will include a 24-month base period (a maximum of $500,000) and a 12-month option period (a maximum of $500,000) for a limited number of awardees who demonstrate exceptional project performance over the base period. 

The DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA) program aims to identify and engage rising stars in junior research positions in academia and equivalent positions at non-profit research institutions, particularly those without prior DARPA funding, to expose them to Department of Defense (DoD) needs and DARPA’s mission to create and prevent technological surprise. The YFA program will provide high-impact funding to elite researchers early in their careers to develop innovative new research that enables transformative DoD capabilities. Ultimately, the YFA program is developing the next generations of researchers focused on national security issues.

Eligibility: Participation is open to individuals who are U.S. Citizens, U.S. Permanent Residents, and Foreign Nationals who meet the following eligibility criteria by the full proposal deadline: current Tenure-Track Assistant/Associate Professors; current Tenured faculty within 3 years of their Tenure date; or an equivalent at a non-profit research institution within 12 years of the receipt of their Ph.D.   

This announcement solicits single principal investigator proposals for research and development in the following specific topic areas (TAs):

1. 3D Microphysiologic Systems
2. Spatially Precise Microenvironments for Localized Therapeutic Intervention
3. Rapid characterization and understanding of mechanisms of cell binding and entry by novel viral pathogens
4. Outcome Selection Through Nontraditional Receptor Modulation
5. Biohybrid Additive Manufacturing of Strong, Flexible Optical Elements
6. Multiscale Modeling of Microbial Communities
7. Decentralized Foundation Models from Small Data
8. Compilation for Integrated Heterogeneous Systems
9. FR (For Real) LLMs 
10. Causal and Mechanistic Explanations of Large Language Models
11. Deployable Radiators for Small, High Power, Low Earth Orbit Spacecraft
12. Optical Coupler Arrays 
13. Photonic Integrated Generators of Multiphoton Entanglement
14. Hardware/Software Fault Injection
15. Advanced Structural Energetics 
16. Beyond Line-of-sight Power Beaming
17. Gas Surface Interactions in Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO)
18. Novel Underwater Propulsion
19. Light-Matter Hybrids in the Large Cooperativity Regime
20. Poetics of Authenticity in Human-AI-Generated Content  
21. 3-Domain Integration
22. Electromagnetic Interference Safeguards Secured by Ionics (EMISSIons)
23. Exploring the Limits of Reinforcement Learning Explainability 
24. Open YFA Topic: DSO invites proposers to submit innovative fundamental research concepts that address one or more of the following technical thrust areas: (1) Novel Materials & Structures, (2) Sensing & Measurement, (3) Computation & Processing, (4) Enabling Operations, (5) Collective Intelligence, and (6) Emerging Threats. 

Review the full research announcement with descriptions of the TAs here: DARPARA2401.pdf.

Lists of previously funded proposals can be found here.