DARPA-RA-19-01.pdf

DARPA-RA-19-01 YOUNG FACULTY AWARD (YFA) 1

Research Announcement Young Faculty Award (YFA)

Defense Sciences Office

DARPA-RA-19-01

August 27, 2019

DARPA-RA-19-01 YOUNG FACULTY AWARD (YFA) 2

Table of Contents I. Funding Opportunity Description

A. Introduction B. Program Description/Scope C. Program Structure D. Eligibility E. Topic Areas (TAs)

II. Award Information A. General Award Information B. Fundamental Research

III. Eligibility Information A. Eligible Applicants B. Organizational Conflicts of Interest C. Cost Sharing/Matching

IV. Application and Submission Information A. Address to Request Application Package B. Content and Form of Application Submission C. Submission Dates and Times D. Funding Restrictions E. Other Submission Requirements

V. Application Review Information A. Evaluation Criteria B. Review and Selection Process C. Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information (FAPIIS)

VI. Award Administration Information A. Selection Notices B. Administrative and National Policy Requirements C. Reporting

VII. Agency Contacts VIII. Other Information

A. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) B. Collaborative Efforts/Teaming C. Proposers Day

ATTACHMENT A: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TEMPLATE

ATTACHMENT B: PROPOSAL TEMPLATE – TECHNICAL & MANAGEMENT VOLUME 1

ATTACHMENT C: COST BREAKDOWN TEMPLATE

ATTACHMENT D: PROPOSAL TEMPLATE – ADMINISTRATIVE & NATIONAL POLICY

REQUIREMENTS VOLUME 3

ATTACHMENT E: PROPOSAL TEMPLATE SUMMARY SLIDE

ATTACHMENT F: COST VOLUME 2 (Optional)

DARPA-RA-19-01 YOUNG FACULTY AWARD (YFA) 3

PART I: OVERVIEW INFORMATION

Federal Agency Name: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Defense Sciences Office (DSO)

Funding Opportunity Title: Young Faculty Award (YFA)

Announcement Type: Research Announcement

Funding Opportunity Number: DARPA-RA-19-01

Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) Number(s): 12.910 Research and Technology Development

Dates (All times listed herein are Eastern Time) o Posting Date: August 27, 2019 o Executive Summary Due Date: September 18, 2019, 4:00 p.m.

o FAQ Submission Deadline: November 9, 2019, 4:00 p.m. See Section VIII.A.

o Full Proposal Due Date: November 19, 2019, 4:00 p.m.

Anticipated Individual Awards: Multiple awards are anticipated.

Anticipated Funding Available for Award: 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).

Types of Instruments that May be Awarded: Grants

Agency Contacts

RA Email: YFA2020@darpa.mil

RA Mailing Address:

DARPA

ATTN: DSO/DARPA-RA-19-01

675 North Randolph Street Arlington, VA 22203-2114

DARPA/DSO Opportunities Website: http://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/opportunities

Teaming Information: See Section VIII.B for information on teaming opportunities.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ): FAQs for this solicitation may be viewed on the DARPA/DSO Opportunities Website. See Section VIII.A for further information.

mailto:YFA2020@darpa.mil http://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/opportunities?tFilter=&oFilter=2&sort=name

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PART II: FULL TEXT OF ANNOUNCEMENT

I. Funding Opportunity Description

This Research Announcement (RA) constitutes a public notice of a competitive funding opportunity as described in 32 CFR§ 22.3 as well as 2 CFR § 200.203. Any resultant negotiations and/or awards will follow all laws and regulations applicable to the specific award instrument(s) available under this RA.

A. Introduction The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award (YFA) program aims to identify and engage rising stars in junior faculty positions in academia and equivalent positions at non-profit research institutions and expose them to Department of Defense (DoD) and National Security challenges and needs. In particular, this YFA will provide high-impact funding to elite researchers early in their careers to develop innovative new research directions in the context of enabling transformative DoD capabilities. The long-term goal of the program is to develop the next generation of scientists and engineers in the research community who will focus a significant portion of their future careers on DoD and National Security issues.

DARPA is particularly interested in identifying outstanding researchers who have previously not been performers on DARPA programs, but the program is open to all qualified applicants with innovative research ideas.

Before preparing an executive summary or proposal submission, proposers are encouraged to review the DARPA mission statement and current program descriptions at the DARPA website https://www.darpa.mil to familiarize themselves with examples of current DARPA investments.

This is not meant as instruction to duplicate those efforts, but rather to illustrate that current programs are aimed at research that will substantially advance our capabilities in these areas.

Once awards are made, each YFA performer will be assigned a DARPA Program Manager with interests closely related to their research topic. The Program Manager will act as project manager and mentor to the YFA award recipients.

Proposers should also familiarize themselves with the “Heilmeier Catechism.” Details about the catechism and questions it seeks to answer can be found at https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/heilmeier-catechism.

B. Program Description/Scope DARPA is soliciting innovative research proposals in the areas of interest to DARPA’s six technical offices: Biological Technologies Office (BTO), Defense Sciences Office (DSO), Information Innovation Office (I2O), Microsystems Technology Office (MTO), Strategic Technology Office (STO), and Tactical Technology Office (TTO). Further detail regarding the specific technical areas of interest can be found under Section I.E “Topic Areas (TAs).”

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.

https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/heilmeier-catechism https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/heilmeier-catechism

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Submissions responding to this RA should clearly describe the DoD problem being addressed, the current state-of-the-art technology, new insights to address the problem, a credible research plan and schedule, and critical, quantitative milestones to be pursued over the research period.

This RA seeks grant proposals only. Submissions for any other award instrument type may be considered non-conforming with the RA and may not be reviewed.

C. Program Structure This RA seeks grant proposals for a research activity consisting of a 24-month base period. No award type other than grants will be issued under this RA. Each 12-month interval of the base period shall not exceed $250,000. Proposals should also include a 12-month option period with a maximum funding level of $500,000. The 12-month 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.

A target start date of July 2020 may be assumed for planning purposes.

As part of the program, a number of visits/exercises at a variety of DoD sites and facilities will be scheduled. These briefings and visits will provide YFA recipients a unique, first-hand exposure to DoD personnel and technologies in the field, issues faced by the Military Services in execution of their missions, and current National Security challenges. It is expected that YFA recipients will participate in a subset of the visits/exercises made available to them. Participation in all such opportunities is not a requirement; however, lack of participation may impact the award of the Director’s Fellowship. Proposers are expected to include the necessary travel funds within the total budget of their proposal. For budgeting purposes, please plan for a minimum of 6 two-day meetings (three meetings in the Washington, D.C. area and three meetings in the San Francisco, CA area). Of the six meetings, four should occur over the course of the 24-month base period and two over the course of the 12-month option period.

D. Eligibility Participation in the YFA program is limited to any current tenure-track Assistant or Associate Professors and to tenured Assistant or Associate Professors within three (3) years of their tenure appointment at a U.S. institution of higher education or equivalent at a U.S. non-profit science and technology research institution. Proposals will not be accepted from foreign organizations.

Previous YFA recipients are not eligible to apply to this or any future YFA program. Please see Section III for more details.

E. Topic Areas (TAs) This RA solicits single principal investigator (PI) proposals for research and development in the specific TAs of interest articulated below. Prior to submitting a full proposal, proposers are strongly encouraged to first submit an executive summary as described in Section IV. 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. Submitting more than one full proposal may result in all of the PI’s proposal submissions being determined non-conforming and being removed from award consideration.

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Potential applicants are encouraged to carefully consider the descriptions of the TAs before submission. Each submission (executive summary or full proposal) must specify ONE and only one TA for the submission and identify this TA on the submission’s cover sheet. Executive Summaries and Full Proposals (limit of one proposal per proposer) that do not clearly address a specific topic may be deemed non-conforming and may not be reviewed. DARPA reserves the right to assign a proposal or an executive summary to a different topic area than indicated by the proposer.

Technical inquiries should be emailed to YFA2020@darpa.mil with the TA stated in the subject line. Your question will be distributed to the appropriate contact. Please see Section VIII.A for more details regarding the question and answer process.

1. Unlocking the Secrets of Roman Concrete

Developing new, extremely durable, and crack resistant materials for use in the marine environment is of great national interest. DARPA is particularly interested in developing concrete that can be used to construct a variety of marine structures including seawalls, artificial reefs, and breakwaters, and that is composed of materials available within the United States supply chain. The Romans developed a concrete material that enabled the construction of seawalls that remained intact for over 2,000 years. Rather than degrading in the presence of seawater, Roman concrete gains durability through dissolution, ion exchange, and crystallization processes. While some information about the material composition was recorded in Vitruvius Pollio’s “The Ten Books on Architecture,” the exact composition and processing technique used by the Romans has been lost to history. DARPA is seeking proposals on work to rediscover the material compositions and processing techniques that produce Roman concrete, as well as conducting the microscale and macroscale characterization of the developed material. Proposals must include development of material samples macroscale durability testing in the presence of seawater, microscale and macroscale analyses.

2. In Vivo Biosensors

Warfighter performance and resilience post-injury will increasingly rely on dynamic, adaptive, and personalized treatments. Currently, large, multi-tissue wounds from blast injuries or severe burns are difficult to treat and typically heal incompletely with scarring or abnormal tissue regeneration. These issues overwhelmingly prevent redeployment of injured Service members who are often otherwise young and healthy. To monitor biological changes in response to military-relevant injuries, DARPA is seeking innovative biosensor technologies and platforms to detect a range of relevant biomolecules. These minimally invasive sensors should collect and transmit the concentration of a target molecule in real-time or near real-time and should be biocompatible for use in vivo. Biomolecules of particular interest include cytokines, chemokines, and/or growth factors associated with the wound healing and regenerative process. Simpler measurements for biomarkers such as pH or oxygenation are not of interest nor are biophysical sensors.

mailto:YFA2019@darpa.mil

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3. Decision Making Algorithm for Medical Countermeasure (MCM) Development

The DoD has a need to develop effective medical countermeasures (MCMs) for the warfighter in a timely manner. There are currently many challenges along the MCM development pipeline from initial MCM identification, manufacturing, formulation, potency, delivery, safety, pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic profiles. Specifically for biologic (protein or nucleic acid) MCMs, there is an opportunity to use advanced analytic approaches based on the sequence information to streamline the MCM development process. Previous investment in DNA or RNA vectored protective monoclonal antibodies has begun to address some of these challenges, but many questions remain around the ability of the nucleic acid to express the desired antibody to sufficient high levels in vivo.

DARPA seeks to develop algorithms to address the ability to predict the translation efficiency of a monoclonal antibody from a nucleic acid construct in vivo. It is envisioned that the proposed work will consist primarily of three components: data generation, computational analysis and in vivo validation of the computational results. In the first component, data generation, proposers shall obtain data on monoclonal antibody sequence and subsequent in vivo expression of that antibody from an RNA and/or DNA construct – obtaining available data from the public domain or a previous effort is appropriate. Proposals will address how the magnitude of the data set will be able to sufficiently support the model development. Secondly, proposers will develop computational approaches to predict the in vivo translation efficiency of a monoclonal antibody from the corresponding RNA and/or DNA construct. Models should address either an absolute prediction of in vivo expression and/or a rank order of highest to lowest expressing antibodies.

Finally, proposers will validate the computational approaches in an appropriate animal model. In vivo expression can be defined as rodent expression and need not be larger animal models.

4. Microbial Community Modeling

Computational modeling of metabolic processes in single microbial species has accelerated their use in metabolic engineering and application in synthetic biology. From geochemistry to the human microbiome, complex microbial ecosystems drive chemical processes across the globe.

For this YFA topic, novel modeling approaches are sought to generate predictive models of dynamic multi-organism systems and their environmental interactions that account for the following: intracellular metabolism, extracellular chemical/biochemical processes, maintenance of membrane chemical/charge potentials, associations with other organisms, and dynamic extracellular conditions. Models should be physiologically accurate and predict intracellular and extracellular conditions of individuals in multi-organism populations in chemically dynamic environments. It is within radically diverse environments that microorganisms employ their membranes to separate intracellular and extracellular chemical processes, and maintaining desired chemical gradients across the membrane is a major energy demand for cells. Dynamic extracellular conditions could alter which membrane transport and interior/exterior biochemical processes are most energy efficient and beneficial for survival. Understanding how the compartmentalized physiologies of microorganisms—in the context of other organisms and their environment—contribute to emergent properties of microbial ecosystems is crucial for engineering these systems. The primary goal of this program is to develop new advanced modeling methodologies to predict the behavior of these cellular control processes and their responses to dynamic changes in extracellular conditions.

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5. Biological Systems for Sensing, Reporting, and Mitigating Air Contamination

The aim of this topic is to develop platform technologies that allow complex engineered living communities to sense, report, and mitigate airborne pollutants and toxins. DARPA envisions that this fundamental research will be instrumental in developing technology that allows for engineering self-sustaining, low-cost biological systems (e.g., microbiomes) which activate to monitor, detect, diagnose, respond, and remediate contaminated indoor air conditions. Potential approaches within scope of this topic are development of methods to speed growth and delivery of populations of microorganisms to non-biological systems (e.g., building components), identify key signals to activate desired functions within microbial populations and/or indoor ecosystems, and direct living organisms to control air and surface microbiomes within a confined space. The overall objective is to implement living organisms to balance the indoor air’s natural microbiota in the event of heightened pathogen, chemical, and/or pollutant presence.

6. Distributed Intelligence in Flexible Robots

Traditional robotic designs use rigid materials with fixed geometric shapes. Such robots have a low tolerance for locomotion errors and are dangerous when operating in cluttered environments.

Advances in materials open the possibility for the development of soft continuum robots, featuring high compliance and inherent safety of operation; however, soft materials have infinitely many degrees of freedom and consequently their complex control remains a computation challenge. Recent research in reservoir computing and morphological computing proposes viewing the complex dynamics of compliant bodies not as problems, but rather opportunities. The idea is that the highly nonlinear dynamics of soft bodies may be considered an exploitable computational resource to solve computational problems. This YFA topic area builds upon this material computation concept that utilizes the computing power inherent in the diverse dynamics of actuating soft materials to achieve a form of distributed intelligence. Soft materials may enable sensing, locomotion control, and even high-level intelligent behaviors such as pose awareness and control, obstacle avoidance, and path planning, all to be directly built into the robotic bodies without relying on a centralized processing unit. The research will cumulate in a lab-scale demonstration of materials executing controlled, purposeful behaviors (as oppose to reactive behaviors) for applications in robots.

7. Bioinspired Soft-Matter Electrical Circuits

Electrical and magnetic phenomena are fundamental properties of all phases of matter but the technological advances we enjoy today are grounded in circuit theories that have largely evolved from, and been confined to, small sets of materials. Concepts of resistance, capacitance and inductance describe biostructures but equivalent circuits describing their electrical functionality are less developed. The task is challenging because of complex boundaries between diverse three dimensional cellular structures some of which exhibit high electrical potentials and all of which transport charged ions. While these active and passive soft-matter circuits drive efficient electromechanical systems and information processing networks, predictive circuit models, like Hodgkin and Huxley’s, remain scarce. DARPA is interested in new approaches to develop ion-based circuit models that incorporate soft-matter components with functionality that may be

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inspired by a biosystem. Examples at the molecular level include the physiological effects of certain ions and radical reactions on a cell influenced by weak magnetic fields, to coupled magnetic circuit models for the vestibular or limbic system’s conducting loops in the brain. All circuit elements, including electromechanical or vibrating components, need to be accurately modeled by their equivalent circuits. Such an approach will provide a quantitative model of electrical and magnetic phenomena in soft-matter systems. This quantitative approach is expected to identify new insights regarding biosystem circuits and bioinspired soft matter circuits whose functionalities are likely to be highly nonlinear, dynamic and ionic current-based. Soft-matter circuit design can lead to the development of firmware/wetware that can interface with biological systems for medical (e.g. wound healing) and communication purposes (prosthetic and neural interfaces). It may also point towards as new efficient green technology opportunities manufactured from soft-matter electronic components and systems.

8. Room-temperature Chip-scale Quantum Opto-mechanical Sensors

This topic seeks development of technologies that enable the coupling between single phonons and photons, i.e. quantum optomechanic, to enable mechanical sensors with ultimate sensitivity.

Typically in order to approach the standard quantum limit of displacement measurement, a mechanical mode needs to be laser-cooled to its quantum ground state—a feat that is elusive at room temperature, where most sensing modalities are performed. A fundamental component of this work will be the development of a new breed of quantum optomechanical sensors operated at room temperature developed on a chip-scale slab-on-substrate, and based on long-lived phonons trapped in the radiation continuum. Such architecture would facilitate the dissipation of thermal phonons as well as other non-resonant phonons while trapping coherent phonons of specific frequencies. DARPA envisions sensors that would find extensive applications across DoD missions based on such approach.

9. AI System Engineering

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being considered for many applications in the near future, not only in DoD, but also elsewhere in Government and in industry. Effective and efficient development and deployment of large numbers of AI applications require consistent standard processes and techniques useable by non-specialists. Acceptance for mission critical applications requires assurance of reliability, maintainability, transparency, explainability, accountability, and other factors. AI is frequently included as a component of a large, complex, heterogeneous system with non-AI software, hardware, and even human components, rather than as a stand-alone software application. Application systems span several dimensions, from non-adaptive to adaptive (i.e., non-AI to AI), simple to complex, and pure information systems to heterogeneous cyber-physical systems. Development and integration methodologies currently exist for complex adaptive information systems (supported by the multitude of software development techniques and tools used by, for example, web application development companies) and complex but non-adaptive cyber-physical systems (large-scale system engineering techniques used by, for example, aerospace manufacturers). However, a mature system comprising an AI component and capable of addressing DoD needs would be adaptive, complex, and cyber-physical. To support the incorporation of AI in complex, non-adaptive, cyber-physical systems and the inclusion of physical components in complex, adaptive, information systems, new techniques for AI system

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engineering are required. These techniques must enable scalable, rigorous, repeatable, and reliable design and development of complex, adaptive, cyber-physical systems comprised of both AI and non-AI components.

This effort should focus on extending state-of-the-art software and system engineering design, implementation, application, and evaluation methods, techniques, and tools that are appropriate, effective, and scalable for large, complex, heterogeneous, adaptable cyber-physical systems comprising AI and other types of components. Where current methods fail, novel methods and techniques should be identified, implemented, and applied to real system development efforts.

They should be evaluated against existing tools and baseline methods, using appropriate metrics, to understand the applicability, benefits, and limitations of the methods, techniques, and tools.

This evaluation should take place in the context of real system development project(s) in which the principal investigator is participating.

10. Advanced Corrosion Control

Corrosion detection and mitigation represents a significant source of cost for the DoD, not only for legacy systems, which can operate for >50 years or more, but also for newer systems that use multi-material lightweighting strategies where corrosion concerns are more difficult to predict.

Current understanding of corrosion initiation is generally empirical and in some cases phenomenological, based on extensive field experience and laboratory testing under proxy conditions. A fundamental understanding of the transient microscale initiation mechanisms that drive nucleation and growth of corrosion is needed to develop a more predictive and prescriptive approach to corrosion mitigation.

This topic seeks combined theoretical-experimental efforts to connect atomic-level corrosion nucleation mechanisms with mesoscale chemistry and the surface/interface microstructural features conducive to nucleation. An understanding of how transient environmental conditions affect nucleation kinetics is also desired. Proposers are highly encouraged to utilize advanced materials modeling, high-throughput synthetic data generation and machine learning-enabled materials techniques along with new methods for obtaining high quality atomic-level data. Any DoD-relevant material system may be considered (but must be specified, along with a use case) under an expected range of environmental and/or microbial-induced conditions.

11. Economics-driven Secure Multiparty Computation

While there has always been some intersection of economics and secure multiparty computation (MPC), notably in notions of the covert security model, fairness, and efforts to bring economic utility into security definitions for simulation-based security, the rise of virtual currencies such as Bitcoin demonstrate that even basic cryptographic primitives can be leveraged to build global-scale secure computation protocols when the added lens of economics is brought to bear (in this case, via proof of work). This effort should focus on looking to further bridge the gap of using sophisticated understandings of economics in order to create novel secure multiparty computation that critically rely on understanding of economics notions (e.g., utility functions, equilibrium theories) to enable breakthrough new capabilities for MPC, particularly those that examine more realistic use cases (and greater incentives for use) via economic analyses. This effort is explicitly not aimed at new cryptocurrency research. Basic extensions to existing

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cryptographic models that leverage economic utility (e.g., fairness, the covert security model) are also not in scope.

12. Cross-Cultural Extrapolation of Privacy-Oriented Human-Technology Interactions

It is well understood that human-technology interactions are a critical aspect of cybersecurity and privacy. However, these studies have largely been conducted within specific socio-cultural environments (most notably, groups within the United States that enjoy relatively broad access to sophisticated technology). This effort looks to create greater understandings of human-technology interaction for privacy amongst communities that have not previously been examined. This may include foreign communities that have critical privacy needs (e.g., due to living under pervasive state surveillance). Means of quantitatively extrapolating from such studies of one population to another are of interest in order to help broaden the scope of rigorous evaluation.

13. Scientific Model Aware Computing

Software systems are integral to the scientific endeavor and have a large design space that depends on the choice of scientific model. The choices of data structures, algorithms, databases, parallel computing strategies, and numerical methods all depend on properties of the model under consideration, and the effort expended on increasingly advanced software development slows the pace of scientific discovery. Model Aware Computing would be the automated generation of specialized, optimal software tailored to the needs of a specific scientific model under consideration without the complexity of highly generic simulations capable of representing many possible phenomena, which fundamentally changes how scientists interact with software development. Model Aware Computing will support the improvement of scientific software and the automating of scientific reasoning, but it will also expose, represent, and realize the interconnected nature of the modeling structures within and between scientific domains.

14. Push Science

Computational models have the potential to elucidate complex systems in a predictive and explainable way but their building is a laborious process that requires significant manual effort to gather expert information and implement the model. The need for human curation results in models that are subject to the limitations of an individual’s knowledge and biases. This topic seeks the development of technologies to build and maintain rich models of complex systems (scientific, social, etc.) by identifying new data and information resources automatically, extracting useful information (causal relations, correlations, context, parameters, etc.), and integrating this into machine-curated expert models. These models should return rich explanations under a variety of different expert queries and eventually be capable of generating (and testing by linking to structured data source) machine-generated hypotheses. Applications will include automatic verification of published scientific results and real-time monitoring of fragile economic, political, social, and environmental systems undergoing complex events.

15. Visualization Innovations for Cyber Terrain Operations Representation (VICTOR)

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Human-computer symbiosis will integrate multiple sensing and actuation modes. These span a many order of magnitude range in information rate capacities, with visual input at the apex.

Interactive gaming and the desire for realistic visual experiences have spurred the development of high performance graphics processing hardware and display technology.

The emergence and continuing evolution of cyberspace, and its elevation as a national security concern motivate this topic. First and foremost, foundational conceptual and theoretical work to develop a physics for cyberspace is necessary. This physics provides the basis for a visual representation for objects, actors and mathematical representations of cyber-kinetics, cyber-inertia and cyber-thermodynamics and development of a physics of cyberspace should be advantageous in dominating interactions with adversaries.

VICTOR research efforts should be focused on disruptive and novel approaches to a physics of cyberspace. This physics will aid situational awareness for US cyberwarriors operating in cyber terrain, e.g., heatmaps, selective revelation of information, and its urgency and persistence. An experimental software implementation that demonstrates the new physics representation idea(s) and exploits available acceleration hardware in doing so is highly desirable/expected.

16. Reducing Errors in Quantum Systems

Quantum systems, both for sensing and information processing are typically limited by noise and errors associated with coupling to classical environmental effects. This topic seeks to accomplish two objectives: 1) improve the realism of error correction in gate-based quantum computation and 2) finding advantages for computation and/or sensing by combining error correction and sensing techniques. Error correction currently considers those errors that arise from coupling of qubits to random noise processes including non-markovian processes and typically these errors have no spatial dependence. The most realistic error model should also include noise sources with probability distributions that vary in both space and time (e.g. a time dependent temperature gradient), 2nd order couplings (e.g. temperature coupling to a control field coupling to qubits), and systematic errors (e.g. the source for a microwave control field changes and effects multiple qubit operations in a systematic way). Those working to reduce classical noise in quantum sensors would benefit from novel noise and error mitigation techniques (e.g. extending coherence in an interferometer). Additionally, quantum computation may benefit from sensor derived techniques. The most successful proposal to this topic will identify methods and techniques to improve error correction realism, develop the theory necessary to understand their effectiveness, develop classical computation simulations of these techniques, and improve both computation and sensing applications in some way.

17. Dielectrics for High-Temperature CMOS FETs

Investments in wide bandgap (WBG) materials such as silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) have enabled new commercially available power electronics. The WBG material foundation can be leveraged for other applications such as high temperature capable electronics.

A current limitation is the availability of dielectric materials that would enable CMOS FETs at high temperature ranges. Innovative approaches to dielectrics for high-temperature CMOS electronics, including gate- and interlayer-dielectrics, that can operate at 500°C and beyond are sought for this topic. Approaches should address leakage, breakdown, and bias instabilities as

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well has thermomechanical stresses. Characterization of dielectric materials operating at a minimum of 500°C is expected at the end of the base period.

18. A Physics-Based Re-exploration of Spectrum Allocation

The electromagnetic (EM) force operates at just the right level of field strength to be useful for moving, storing, and controlling information. Once discovered as a means to create wireless telegraphy, applications in radio, computers, and information theory, the utility of and access to EM spectrum (EMS) has become a critical part of the digital world. Since days of wireless telegraphy by Marconi, the last century has been a very tight coupling of technology, economics, policy, and society. Today, we have wideband, tunable software defined radios and free and open source software such as GNU Radio that change how we can interact with the EMS. The growing importance of EMS for governments, military, and general society, especially given the current spectrum issues with 5G, is undeniable. The difficulty is in working with a century of regulations and incumbents despite a vastly different world of technology, application needs, and societal demands. In this topic, DARPA wants to rethink approaches to EMS management through a holistic and physics-driven methodology.

The research should first contextualize the problem based on the history of applications, spectrum regulations, and technology. This background will include work in dynamic spectrum access (DSA) such as DARPA xG technology and DARPA’s current Spectrum Collaboration Challenge (SC2) as well as research in DSA from the IEEE DySPAN Symposium and new regulatory approaches such as licensed shared access (LSA).

The research should clearly identify possible applications of EM spectrum and map them to the physics requirements needed to support them such as power, dynamic range, frequency, bandwidth, latency, and size, weight, and power (SWaP) constraints. All possible degrees of freedom should be accounted for. The work in representing these problems should have a rigorous mathematical model with an information theoretic-driven approach to modeling how information is moved and distorted/reduced through interference.

The work should produce a new perspective on EM spectrum device capabilities to inform new approaches to spectrum sharing and point the way to inform the next generation of EM devices.

The models are the output goal of this research work and should culminate in mathematical models, experimental analysis, and a set of recommendations for future technology development.

Proposers should plan on continuous engagements with regulators, the wireless industry, and wireless researchers, including the GNU Radio and DySPAN communities. The work should focus on a full perspective of the history, technology, understood physics of EM, and known technology solution to EMS from start to finish.

19. Detecting Cognitive Dissonance & Belief Shift Over Time

This topic seeks to develop and validate methods: 1) for detecting and identifying cognitive dissonance – or when a person or community holds two beliefs that are in conflict, and specifically when a belief is in conflict with an action, and 2) for predicting when confronted with the conflict, what action the conflicted will take to resolve the tension (e.g., change beliefs, change actions, add rationalizing thoughts, trivialize the inconsistency, etc.). Of particular interest is how repeated and recursive cycles of confrontation and resolution shift belief and/or

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actions over time – weeks, months or even years. For example, a woman may believe smoking is bad for her health, but continue to smoke. She may resolve the conflict by changing her behavior, trivializing the conflict, or justifying it with additional, moderating beliefs regarding her healthy eating habits and active lifestyle. Over time she may shift her thinking to believe that because she smokes she is driven to exercise and therefore smoking is actually improving her overall health. Scalable methods are preferred over small-sample methods, however applicants may consider testing theories in controlled conditions to compliment and validate scalable approaches. Proposers should describe their plan to: test the method; to demonstrate the method’s generalizability (e.g., should apply to any area of the world); and to quantify uncertainties, limitations, and/or prediction horizons. Applicants may propose to apply methods from other domains to this particular challenge provided the proposal describes how and why the approach is applicable to meet topic goals. Please indicate whether the work will include Human Subjects Research and how Independent Review Board (IRB) approvals will affect schedule.

DARPA encourages preregistration of all research studies.

20. Chip-scale Blind Sampled Wideband Periodogram and Time Transfer by Machine Learning

Detecting, synchronizing and establishing peer-to-peer wireless cognitive communications without a centralized reference signal are critical for many DoD and future 5G/6G commercial wireless applications. This topic seeks to explore how machine learning chip-scale solutions can provide low latency detection, synchronization and timing transfer of accurate clocks between cognitive mobile devices operating in the absence of centralized reference clock signals, such as provided by a basestation or GPS. Successful proposals will focus on blind capture, processing and extraction of single/multiple periodic clocks to establish two-way time transfer for ultra wideband and/or multi-band signals over a wide spectrum ( >10 GHz) without a priori knowledge, while mitigating undesirable fading, interferences and impairments in the communication channel. While this is a basic research exploration, culmination in a working demonstration is expected, including the implementation of a chip-scale energy-efficient low latency (< 10us) electronic integrated circuits designed using these algorithms.

21. Practical Antineutrino Detectors

This topic seeks to advance antineutrino detector technology toward the practical use of antineutrinos as a tool for national security applications. Nuclear reactors produce antineutrinos in copious quantities. The antineutrinos cannot be shielded because they rarely interact with matter. By the same token, they are extremely difficult to detect. Fundamental physics experiments have successfully demonstrated remote detection of (anti-)neutrinos from reactors and other sources. The detectors used in these experiments have been very large, deep underground, and expensive. Furthermore, teams of experts were required to calibrate and maintain the equipment and to analyze the data. The aim of this topic is to investigate promising next-generation technologies for the detection of reactor antineutrinos with the goal of an order of magnitude improvement over the current state of the art in any one of size, required overburden, cost, robustness, automation, background rejection, or angle-of-arrival precision.

22. RF Power Harvesting for Remote Sensing

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Ambient RF energy harvesting concepts have been around since the early 2000’s when microelectronics became efficient enough to make use of their low energy yield. A key player in RF energy harvesting is the rectenna which uses an integrated rectifier and antenna to convert RF power to DC power at much greater efficiencies. However, rectenna conversion efficiency is not maintained at low RF power (<<1mW) on account of limiting diode characteristics used in rectification. This relegates RF energy harvesting to regions in close proximity to an RF transmitter. DARPA is seeking innovative methods for harvesting RF energy with high efficiency in regions with low RF power (<<1mW).

23. Low Loop Latency Distributed Time Transfer

Distributed time transfer is the process of synchronizing reference clocks via a wireless link between multiple radios. Distributed time transfer can improve relative position and timing measurements leading to new applications in distributed computing, communications, navigation, geo-location and sensing. Accurate time transfer requires continuous feedback and adjustment to maintain clock alignment. The primary limitation to highly accurate distributed time transfer is prediction of future phase in the presence of phase noise. During time transfer one clock transmits to a remote clock whereby the remote clock is able to update its clock based on a prediction of the phase of the originating clock. However, the originating clock, being subject to phase noise, will drift in the intervening time. In these distributed systems, loop latency is dependent on distance between nodes plus integration and processing time leading to loop latencies >1ms. This topic seeks innovative solutions for significantly reducing the effect of loop latency for the purpose of maintaining tightly synchronized reference clocks from multiple radios (>10) across long distances (>> 1 km) despite the presence of substantial phase nose.

24. High-Entropy Alloys Study

High entropy alloys are materials which are comprised of 5 or more elements (typically 3d metals) decorating a single crystal lattice. The large chemical entropy in these materials increases their melting temperature to >2000° C, while the short-range disorder tends to resist oxygen migration. These qualities are ideal to meet the challenges of extreme environments, such as atmospheric reentry. DARPA seeks proposals that investigate ultra-low density materials (<1%

wt. bulk) comprised of high-entropy alloys, that could be used for a low density "skin". We also seek ideas for deposition of these skins (such as electrodeposition from ionic solutions) or their creation via in situ nuclear decay. Electrodepositing into polycarbonate track-etched membranes, creates high-entropy alloy nanowires which can be harvested, dispersed and freeze-dried, leaving a nanoscale birdsnest, with densities of ≈0.1% of bulk with excellent thermal and electronic properties. Sintering these structures crosslinks the wires and provides significant structural strength. Similar and alternative approaches are encouraged as are studies of the broader mechanical, thermal, electromagnetic properties of such structures.

25. Ocean Object Identification via Distributed Sensors

This topic seeks new methods or technologies that enable detection of man-made objects in an ocean environment utilizing ‘through the sensor’ environmental data from large distributed

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arrays of in-situ sensors. Low cost sensors and platforms with numerous observation modalities and robust communications capabilities continue to emerge, and their potential for deployment in massive sensor arrays is presently being demonstrated. Research should focus on exploiting the distributed nature of the sensor placement as well as using environmental data that is not explicitly intended or tuned for object detection. DARPA envisions systems that can simulate new and innovative sensor arrays, provide synthetic data for exploitation algorithm development, and predict array performance for object detection. Ideas that employ integrated (sensor and environment) modeling, sparse data assimilation, and machine learning techniques are encouraged.

26. Flame Stability and Ignition in Partially-Premixed High-Speed Flows

Flame stabilization in high-speed flows is often understood based on studies of premixed combustion. Eventually reusable high-speed engines may exist that will operate over a wide range of conditions, often utilizing cavities in a partially-premixed regime that has not been studied to the same extent as the premixed regime. Understanding how to properly design such engines for flame stability and ignition requires a greater understanding of the scaling parameters and stabilization mechanisms involved in these flows. This effort should be focused on the application of modern diagnostics and computational modeling to better understand the mechanisms by which these flames ignite and stabilize relative to flame stratification, degree of partial-premixing, and burning location.

27. On-Orbit Servicing Architectures for Proliferated Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Constellations

This topic seeks innovative approaches to on-orbit servicing of proliferated LEO constellations.

The primary client focus for current and next-generation servicers (e.g., RSGS, RESTORE-L) has been large, long-lived, high-value assets such as GEO comsats and LEO/MEO science and weather satellites. The envisioned LEO constellation spacecraft are, instead, small low-value spacecraft with limited lifetimes. So far there has been relatively little consideration of the potential role for on-orbit servicing of these assets, given that self-disposal and replacement appears to be a relatively low-cost alternative. Proposed efforts may address technical, economic, and policy objectives that enhance existing capabilities or enable new capabilities for proliferated LEO constellations through on-orbit servicing. Notional servicing capabilities could include docking (connecting) with client vehicles not designed for docking, docking with rotating vehicles not under control, controlling and maneuvering the combined servicer and client stack, attaching secondary payloads to ad hoc hard points on a client, accessing client ground test power and data ports on-orbit, attaching de-orbit packages to derelict objects, and more. Note:

This call seeks proposals at the architecture and/or system level, and is not seeking individual component-level technologies.

II. Award Information A. General Award Information

DARPA anticipates multiple awards.

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The level of funding for individual awards made under this RA will depend on the quality of the proposals received and the availability of funds. Awards will be made to proposers1 whose proposals are determined to be the most advantageous to the Government, all evaluation factors considered. See Section V for further information.

The Government reserves the right to:

select for negotiation all, some, one, or none of the proposals received in response to this solicitation;

make awards without discussions with proposers;

conduct discussions with proposers if it is later determined to be necessary;

segregate portions of resulting awards into pre-priced options;

accept proposals in their entirety or to select only portions of proposals for award;

fund awards in increments with options for continued work at the end of one or more phases and increase the cost ceiling of the award for additional work within scope;

request additional documentation once the award instrument has been determined (e.g., representations and certifications); and remove proposers from award consideration should the parties fail to reach agreement on award terms within a reasonable time or the proposer fails to provide requested additional information in a timely manner.

Proposals identified for negotiation will result in a grant.

B. Fundamental Research It is DoD policy that the publication of products of fundamental research will remain unrestricted to the maximum extent possible. National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 189 defines fundamental research as follows:

‘Fundamental research’ means basic and applied research in science and engineering, the results of which ordinarily are published and shared broadly within the scientific community, as distinguished from proprietary…