DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA)
Sponsor Deadline for Executive Summaries (strongly encouraged): November 4, 2021
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: January 18, 2022
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: January 25, 2022
Award Amount: Each award will include a 24-month base period (maximum of $500,000; PIs may request up to $250,000 per year) and a 12-month option period (maximum of $500,000). This option period, referred to as the “Director’s Fellowship,” will be reserved for a limited number of awardees who demonstrate exceptional YFA project performance over the 24-month base period

DARPA’s 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. Participation is open to individuals who are U.S. Citizens, U.S. permanent residents, and foreign nationals who are: 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. Recipients of non-YFA DARPA awards are eligible to propose. Submissions to young investigator programs sponsored by other agencies are not restricted.

This research announcement solicits single PI proposals for research and development in the following specific topic areas (TAs) of interest:

1. Modulation of Brown Adipose Tissue for Arctic Resilience
2. Engineered Cellular Symbiosis (ECS)
3. Hierarchical Control of Biomaterial Structure, Function, and Organization for Injury Repair
4. Metabolic Engineering Enabling Rare Chemistries
5. Strongly Correlated Material Systems and Sensors
6. Benchmarking Power Requirements for Electromagnetic Non-reciprocity
7. Autonomous Manufacturing and Repair for Austere Environments
8. Neuromorphic Metamaterials
9. Computational Theory of Information Control
10. Threat Modeling of the Influence Platform Ecosystem
11. Patch Process Leapfrogging
12. Computational Theory of Insecurity
13. Effective Assurance for 5G Technologies
14. Adaptive Conventions for Human-Machine Partnership
15. Embodied Physical Intelligence
16. Physics of Charge Trapping in Bulk Dielectrics
17. In-Situ Characterization of Additively Manufactured Materials in Complex Structures
18. Self-Assembled Transistor Fabrication to Support Manufacturing as a Technology Differentiator
19. Highly-reliable and Bandwidth-scalable Electrical Interconnects
20. Intelligent Sensor Management for Undersea Environmental Characterization
21. Distributed Machine Learning over Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTNs)
22. Trust Architectures to Enable Space Infrastructure as a Service
23. Scaling Challenges in Metal Additive Manufacturing
24. Platform Design Optimization Leveraging Power Beaming
25. Integrated Perception Learning and Control for Autonomous Robots

Each submission (executive summary or full proposal) must specify ONE and only one TA for the submission. At the executive summary phase, proposing PIs are limited to one executive summary per TA. At the full proposal phase, proposing PIs are limited to submitting only one full proposal to only one topic under this RA.