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 Departmental Offices Interior Business Center awarded a $250,000 cooperative agreement to The Leland Stanford Junior University on September 30, 2025, under the Research and Technology Development program (CFDA 12.910).

The award funds development of AI-guided strategies for spatiotemporal programming of thermal patterns in shape memory polymer metamaterial sheets to enable on-demand, localized tuning of mechanical properties for regulating elastic and acoustic waves. Applications include redirecting high-intensity acoustic waves from sonic weapons and damping vibrations across varying frequencies in both military and civilian contexts. Current metamaterials possess fixed mechanical properties once fabricated, limiting their ability to adapt to varying environments; this research addresses that constraint by enabling dynamic, tunable response to external elastic or acoustic waves.

Performance extends through September 29, 2027, with work performed in California. The award is part of DARPA's Young Faculty Award program soliciting innovative research across the Defense Sciences Office, Information Innovation Office, Microsystems Technology Office, and Tactical Technology Office, targeting revolutionary advances in science, devices, or systems rather than evolutionary improvements to existing practice.

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. This research aims to develop AI-guided strategies for the spatiotemporal programming of thermal patterns in shape memory polymer (SMP) metamaterial sheets, which enable on-demand, localized tuning of mechanical properties to regulate elastic and acoustic waves. These multifunctional systems can be applied in both military and civilian contexts, such as for redirecting high-intensity acoustic waves from sonic weapons and damping vibrations across varying frequencies.metamaterials have been extensively studied for designing wave-regulating systems, enabling applications such as vibration isolators, acoustic wave cloaking devices, and waveguides. Their functionality and ability to tune elastic or acoustic waves are predominantly determined by mechanical properties such as elastic modulus and damping coefficient. To date, most metamaterials possess fixed mechanical properties once fabricated, resulting in a predetermined response when subjected to external elastic or acoustic waves. This rigidity prevents them from adapting to varying environments, making them UNI-functional with limited capability to interact with dynamically changing elastic and acoustic waves in military and civilian scenarios. To address these limitations, active metamaterials have recently emerged to have tunable properties by shape changes in response to external stimuli such as mechanical loads, thermal loads, electrical currents, and magnetic fields. However, the shape-changing mechanisms are often constrained by complex actuation methods, and their slow deformation rates make them unsuitable for applications requiring rapid responses to dynamically varying external waves. Moreover, achieving the desired dynamic response to varying wave inputs remains a significant challenge for current metamaterial systems due to the vast design space and the absence of robust multiphysics models that effectively link metamaterial reconfiguration with its corresponding wave regulation behavior. This highlights an urgent need to develop novel active metamaterials and their dynamic programming strategies for rapid, on-demand, and highly adaptive wave regulation capabilities. The outcome of this project is AI-guided design and rapid programming strategies for a smart SMP metamaterial system capable of environment-adaptive and multifunctional wave regulation for both military and civilian uses. The proposed fundamental research will advance multiple fields and disciplines. The novel SMP metamaterial, as a composite, exhibits thermoviscoelastic behaviors that open up diverse applications in materials science. Its multiphysics modeling will provide a foundational framework for developing general thermally-driven metamaterials. Additionally, the AI-guided design and programming strategies can be leveraged to explore new intelligent dynamic material systems for a wide range of functions and applications.