DOD Multidisciplinary Research Program of the University Research Initiative (MURI)
Sponsor Deadline for White Papers (encouraged): June 3, 2019
FAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposals: September 13, 2019
Award Amount: The awards will be made at funding levels commensurate with the proposed research and in response to agency missions (see the BAA for recommended funding profiles for each topic area). Typical annual funding per grant is in the $1.25M to $1.5M range. Each individual award will be for a three-year base period with one two-year option period to bring the total maximum term of the award to five years.

The Department of Defense (DoD) Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI), one element of the University Research Initiative (URI), is sponsored by the DoD research offices: the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the Army Research Office (ARO), and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR). DOD's MURI program addresses high risk basic research and attempts to understand or achieve something that has never been done before. The MURI program supports basic research in science and engineering at U.S. institutions of higher education that is of potential interest to DoD. The program is focused on multidisciplinary research efforts where more than one traditional discipline interacts to provide rapid advances in scientific areas of interest to the DoD. Key to the program’s success is the close management of the MURI projects by Service program officers and their active role in providing research guidance.

The FY 2020 MURI competition is for the following topics:

ONR:
Topic 1: Stimuli-Responsive Materials based on Triggered Polymer Depolymerization
Topic 2: Quantum Benefits without Quantum Fragility: The Classical Entanglement of Light
Topic 3: Mathematical Methods for Deep Learning
Topic 4: Spin and Orbital Angular Momentum (SAM & OAM)
Topic 5: Photonic High-Order Topological Insulators (PHOTIs)
Topic 6: Active Topological Mechanical Metamaterials
Topic 7: Harvesting Oxygen from the Ocean
Topic 8: Exploring Oxidation and Surface Phenomena of Multi-Principal Element Alloys
Topic 9: The Physics of High-Speed Multiphase-flow / Material Interactions
Topic 10: Combining Disparate Environmental Data Into a Common Framework

ARO:
Topic 11: Adaptive and Adversarial Machine Learning
Topic 12: Axion Electrodynamics beyond Maxwell's Equations
Topic 13: Engineering Endosymbionts to Produce Novel Functional Materials
Topic 14: Information Exchange Network Dynamics
Topic 15: Mathematical Intelligence: Machines with More Fundamental Capabilities
Topic 16: Quantum State Engineering for Enhanced Metrology
Topic 17: Solution Electrochemistry without Electrodes
Topic 18: Stimuli-Responsive Mechanical Metamaterials

AFOSR:
Topic 19: Machine Learning and Physics-Based Modeling and Simulation
Topic 20: Fundamental Design Principles for Engineering Orthogonal Liquid-Liquid Phase Separations in Living Cells
Topic 21: Modeling, Prediction, and Mitigation of Rare and Extreme Events in Complex Physical Systems
Topic 22: Fundamental Limits of Controllable Waveform Diversity at High Power
Topic 23: Full Quantum State Control at Single Molecule Levels
Topic 24: Constructive Mathematics and Its Synthetic Concepts from Type Theory
Topic 25: Weyl Fermion Optoelectronics
Topic 26: Mechanisms of Ice Nucleation and Anti-Icing Constructs