Federal agency name: defense advanced research projects agency (DARPA), defense sciences office (DSO) funding opportunity title: young faculty award (YFA) funding opportunity number:…

The Department of the Interior, Interior Business Center, awarded a $500,000 cooperative agreement to the Regents of the University of Michigan on September 30, 2025, under the Research and Technology Development program (CFDA 12.910). The award funds innovative research in areas of interest to DARPA's Defense Sciences Office, Information Innovation Office, Microsystems Technology Office, and Tactical Technology Office, with a period of performance through September 29, 2027. Work is performed in Michigan. The Research and Technology Development program supports basic, applied, and advanced research at educational institutions, nonprofit organizations, and commercial firms with potential military or dual-use application; projects are expected to advance the state of the art or result in fundamental change in technology. Evaluation criteria for the award included overall scientific and technical merit, potential contribution and relevance to DARPA mission, offeror capabilities and related experience, plans and capability to accomplish technology transition, and cost realism.

Federal agency name: defense advanced research projects agency (DARPA), defense sciences office (DSO) funding opportunity title: young faculty award (YFA) funding opportunity number: DARPARA2501CATALOG of federal domestic assistance (cfda) number(s): 12.910 research and technology developmentprogram description: DARPA is soliciting innovative research proposals in the areas of interest to the following DARPA technical offices: defense sciences office (DSO), information innovation office (I2O), microsystems technology office (MTO), and the tactical technology office (TTO). Further detail regarding the specific technical areas of interest can be found below under open office topics. Proposed research should investigate innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances in science, devices, or systems. Specifically excluded is research that primarily results in evolutionary improvements to the existing state of practice. The last two decades have delivered a step-change increase in the affordability and availability of mmwave (electromagnetic waves in the 30 GHZ 300 GHZ range) hardware. Indeed, any individual can now acquire a 60 GHZ radar for less than $50IN a band that was formerly only within the budget of large organizations to occupy. From an application standpoint, this evolution could enable the emergence of array systems that are simultaneously compact while featuring massive numbers (100K ) of elements, thereby allowing the creation of ultra-directive (laser-like) mmwave beams.however, this potential is suppressed by two major challenges: array-wide synchronization and aiming. When an array of six antennassuch as the one used in the aforementioned radargrows to the 2000 elements of the F35S an APG-81 scanned array, $500M of meticulous design and production have to be expended to synchronize all array elements together using a central heartbeat (the clock) which has to be delivered to each element with PS accuracy across the structure. Each array then has to be individually and regularly calibrated to compensate for manufacturing errors and aging, and to enable the creation of directive beams. Once those pencil beams can be created, their aiming subsequently presents a massive challenge, requiring constant computations and feedback and leading to accuracies and precisions that are orders of magnitude too low for massive arrays or in the context of wireless power applications featuring dynamic targets.to my knowledge, there have been sporadic attempts to address the synchronization problem. These have relied on a neighbor-to-neighbor sharing of the central clock signal, which suffers from the same issues as the standard centralized methodthe need for array-wide synchronization is fundamental. The aiming challenge has, however, been more convincingly tackled using retrodirective emitters. By relying on a pilot signal transmitted by the target, retrodirective arrays equipped with phase conjugation cells ensure that the emitted beam is aimed in the exact direction of the pilot signal. However, current designs share the main drawback of conventional arrays: their reliance on an on-board clock signal required to be shared across the entire array and an accordingly high lack of scalability.to introduce a new paradigm for antenna array synthesis. While all existing array synthesis methods depend on a painstaking system-level, centralized approach, i propose to introduce individual array cells capable of spontaneous synchronization with one another in a process similar to that of heart cells 8 via a combination of neighbor-to-neighbor electromagnetic coupling and pilot-signal referencing. This new concept will be developed, prototyped, characterized, and demonstrated through the design of the single-cell element, its increasingly large arraying, and the analysis of its behavior and performance. Such an array will be assembled and implemented for the wireless transmission of power to a moving target.