Emerging Opportunities

The goal of the Young Faculty Award (YFA) program is to encourage junior faculty at universities and their equivalent at non-profit science and technology research institutions to participate in sponsored research programs that will augment capabilities for future defense systems. This program focuses on cutting-edge technologies for greatly enhancing microsystems technologies, biological technologies, and defense sciences. The long-term goal for this program is to develop the next generation of scientists, engineers, and mathematicians in key disciplines who will focus a significant portion of their careers on Department of Defense (DoD) and national security issues. The aim is for YFA recipients to receive deep interactions with DARPA program managers, programs, performers, and the user community. Current activities include research in fifteen topic areas spanning from Machine Learning and Many Body Physics, to Wideband Transmitter-Antenna Interfaces and Multi-Scale Models of Infectious Disease Dynamics. A key aspect of the YFA program is DARPA-sponsored military visits; all YFA Principal Investigators are expected to participate in one or more military site visits to help them better understand DoD needs. Prior to FY 2026, this program was funded in PE 0601101E, Project CCS-02.

In the Moment (ITM) supports the development of algorithms that are trusted to make decisions independently in difficult domains. Military operations, such as mass casualty triage and disaster relief, require complex and rapid decision-making in dynamic situations where there is often no human consensus and no ground truth. The ITM program generates a quantitative alignment framework for trusted human decision-makers and algorithms. ITM investigates these decision-making problems in the context of medical triage in military environments. If the ITM program is successful, the alignment framework will support the development of algorithms that can be tuned to align with specific, trusted humans. Prior to FY 2026, this program was funded in PE 0601101E, Project CCS-02.

The Intrinsic Cognitive Security (ICS) program is extending computational formal methods with cognitive guarantees and models to protect mixed reality (MR) users from cognitive attack. MR integrates virtual and real worlds in real time and will be ubiquitous in future military missions, including missions involving dismounted soldiers. Currently, users of MR systems are vulnerable to a wide variety of adversary attacks that exploit the intimate connection between users and MR equipment. Formal methods are rigorous, mathematics-based approaches that provide guarantees about computer-based systems, such as the absence of exploitable weaknesses. Cognitive models represent aspects of human perception, action, memory, and reasoning. The ICS program extends formal methods by explicitly creating and analyzing cognitive models as part of MR system development to protect the user from cognitive attacks. ICS will create cognitive guarantees that address mixed reality vulnerabilities and are expressed in languages suitable for proofs from models; will build cognitive models for reasoning about users of mixed reality systems with sufficient fidelity relative to human behaviors; and will evaluate model, proof, and guarantee validity using automated reasoning tools and prototype implementations of proved guarantees. The cognitive protections to be developed under ICS will prevent exploitation of MR systems by adversaries. Prior to FY 2026, this program was funded in PE 0601101E, Project CCS-02.

The Translating All C To Rust (TRACTOR) program aims to automate the process of transitioning legacy C to Rust, with the same quality and style that a skilled Rust developer would employ. At present, buffer overflow vulnerabilities and other related memory safety software flaws allow an attacker to inject messages that hijack control of a computer. TRACTOR combines programming language and machine learning techniques, including large language models, to eliminate memory safety vulnerabilities. TRACTOR researchers are building C to Rust translation systems for single-threaded application translation, and, with this experience, will then address multi-threaded application translation. If successful, TRACTOR will enable the wholesale translation of C programs to Rust, thereby eliminating memory safety vulnerabilities in mission-critical and other high-priority software-reliant systems. Prior to FY 2026, this program was funded in PE 0601101E, Project CCS-02.

The Advanced Research Concepts (ARC) program will rapidly explore revolutionary, nascent high-risk/high-reward ideas to accelerate the discovery of paradigm-shifting technologies. The program will focus on answering fundamental research questions to investigate the boundaries of what is possible and push the state of the art of science and technology. By exploring a high volume of ideas through targeted and limited-scope investments, this program will identify promising ideas early and assess the impact of further investment on problems of importance to the Department of Defense. The program will cover a broad spectrum of science and engineering disciplines that have applications for national security research. Individual efforts will explore numerous emerging technologies in various thrusts including, but not limited to, artificial intelligence and machine learning, mathematics, biology, chemistry, quantum technologies, social science, material science, electronics, sensing and measurement, and modeling. Prior to FY 2026, this program was funded in PE 0601101E, Project CCS-02.

The Fostering Research and Growth in Emerging Artificial Intelligence (AI FORGE) project aims to capture and solve pre-competitive AI research challenges to accelerate the development and fielding of frontier AI for national security. At present, a relatively small number of frontier AI companies drive most innovation in AI with a strong focus on commercialization and return-on-investment. AI FORGE seeks to make national security considerations more prominent in the generative AI development lifecycle. These considerations primarily involve the life- and mission-critical nature of national security generative AI use cases, which span information-centric intelligence analysis to grounded planning of logistics and tactical operations to embodiment in autonomous systems, and the highly adversarial nature of battlefield operational environments. For such use cases and environments, challenges of assurance, predictability, reliability, resilience, and transparency are of heightened importance. AI FORGE will conduct high-risk, high-reward efforts that address cross-cutting challenges that arise when using frontier AI for national security applications, systems, and missions. AI FORGE will combine the talents of universities with resources from frontier AI companies to create an R&D ecosystem focused on national security. Prior to FY 2026, this program was funded in PE 0601101E, Project CCS-02.

The Exponentiating Mathematics (expMath) program will develop and apply artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to enable breakthrough advances in national security-related mathematical fields. At present, important problems in mathematics take decades or centuries to resolve, but recent advances in generative AI (genAI) and large language models (LLMs) offer the promise of accelerating advances in mathematics. expMath aims to use AI to automate the discovery of new mathematical knowledge. Creating an AI with these mathematical capabilities will require advances along two fronts: decomposition/abstraction and formalization/informalization. expMath will focus on mathematical domains of particular importance for national security. If successful, expMath will provide the basis for potential leap-ahead mathematical capabilities for the U.S. Prior to FY 2026, this program was funded in PE 0601101E, Project CCS-02.

The Scientific Feasibility (SciFy) program is developing computational methods to measure the feasibility of claims to enable accurate assessments of scientific content. Automated scientific content generation, via rapidly improving large pre-trained models, has the potential to disrupt the U.S. technology base in times of crisis and to distort the global race for technological dominance in key areas. Similarly, false capability claims can have significant negative implications for national security and international relations. To address these threats, SciFy will focus on methods for assessing the scientific feasibility of claims by using automated reasoning to decompose claims into constituent, verifiable parts. Assessing each component will involve referencing existing technological advancements, foundational scientific principles, data, software, models, simulation results, and industry standards or benchmarks. SciFy will create methods that go beyond automated fact-checking by addressing complex component interactions and operational constraints, and evaluating logical consistency, system integration, and compatibility considerations. If successful, SciFy will enable the U.S. to reliably determine whether claimed scientific and technological capabilities are practical and realistic when considered as a whole, even when theoretically possible in parts. The SciFy program is also funded in PE 0602025E, Project MSL-05. Prior to FY 2026, this program was funded in PE 0601101E, Project CCS-02 and PE 0602303E, Project IT-04.

The Enhanced SBOM for Optimized Software Sustainment (E-BOSS) program is creating enhanced software bill of materials (eSBOM) technologies with new types of rich metadata and is developing cyber reasoning algorithms and tools that leverage eSBOMs to defend against potential flaws during the software development process and to triage and remediate flaws found in operation. The global impacts of flawed software deployed at scale, such as the Log4Shell vulnerability found in Log4j cloud and web app deployments, where mitigations took from one week to months, motivated new SBOM requirements in Executive Order 14028. SBOMs alone, however, cannot enable identification and mitigation of the flow of hostile data to the flaws in the code. E-BOSS is developing software technologies integrated with modern software build chains to enable rapid triage and remediation of vulnerabilities at enterprise scale. The enhanced metadata incorporated in the eSBOMs will enable trace back of discovered flaw evidence to derive the vulnerability triggers, starting from a crash and tracing back through complex inter-component interactions, transfers, and transformations. If successful, E-BOSS technologies will enable cyber-reasoning for improved remediation and sustainment of large-scale software systems. Prior to FY 2026, this program was funded in PE 0601101E, Project CCS-02.

The Advanced Tools for Modeling and Simulation thrust is developing foundational mathematical, computational, and multi-physics theories, approaches, and tools to better represent, quantify, and model complex Department of Defense (DoD) systems from multimodal data analysis through part/system design and fabrication. One focus area of this thrust is developing is a unified mathematical framework to enable better visualization and analysis of massive, complex data sets. Rigorous mathematical theories are also being developed to address uncertainty in the modeling and design of complex multi-scale physical and engineering systems, incorporating capabilities to handle noisy data and model uncertainty that were well beyond the scope of capabilities that existed at the time. Other work in this thrust focuses on developing the mathematical and computational tools required to generate and better manage the enormous complexity of design, ultimately allowing designers to more easily discover non-intuitive (yet realizable) designs that fully leverage new materials and advanced manufacturing approaches now available. Outcomes from this thrust seek to improve the speed and accuracy of modeling and simulation, as well as enable management of complexity across DoD devices, parts, and systems. Another focus area of this thrust is the development of quantum-assisted approaches for predicting behavior and non-intuitive failure pathways for complex, dynamic physical systems. Prior to FY 2026, this program was funded in PE 0601101E, Project CCS-02.

This thrust will investigate methods to allow artificial intelligence (AI) logical inferencing to become massively parallel and distributed. Such AI logical inferencing includes extended logic programs used for deduction (e.g., query-answering), induction (i.e., machine learning), and abduction (e.g., argumentation and causal explanation finding). Enabling the computational scaling up of a knowledge supply chain in AI: to harness accumulated human knowledge (notably expertise), then learn beyond that; with high levels of abstraction, generality, and reusability will require new algorithms, and tools to create distributed knowledge bases that efficiently yet coherently communicate and cooperate, dynamically. This was previously Emerging Opportunities in Math and Computer Sciences. Prior to FY 2026, this program was funded as Emerging Opportunities in Math and Computer Science in PE 0601011E, Project CCS-02.

This thrust will develop new mathematical tools for analyzing large data sets for the discovery of new/hidden relationships, for the prediction of phenomena and (rare) events, for the disentanglement of multimodal data, as well as for the discrimination between valuable and invaluable information. This thrust includes the development of novel algorithms to search data, identify and quantify their relationships for task-specific applications and enable the generalizable abstractions directly from experimental data. Emerging opportunities in this thrust will explore quantum algorithms for modeling complex systems for the simulation of highly correlated materials and systems that are intractable with current classical approaches, i.e. modeling magnetism, superconductivity and nature. Prior to FY 2026, this program was funded in PE 0601011E, Project CCS-02.

The Joint University Microelectronics Program 2.0 (JUMP 2.0) program is developing and demonstrating innovative next-generation microelectronics technologies through a public-private consortium with universities, the defense industrial base, and the semiconductor industry. The JUMP 2.0 program addresses the grand technical challenges of our increasingly connected world that must be overcome including: the need for innovation in analog hardware, increasing demand for more memory and data storage, the imbalance between data generation and communication capacity, the emerging security vulnerabilities in highly interconnected Artificial Intelligence systems, and the unsustainable growth in energy demands for computing. Therefore, the JUMP 2.0 program sponsors academic research teams focused on related key technology areas that will not only impact future defense and national security capabilities but also strengthen U.S. leadership in information and communication technology. The JUMP 2.0 program will push fundamental technology research themes in cognition, communications, sensing to action, computing and processing, memory and storage, integration and packaging, and high-performance energy efficient devices to enable key disruptive advances in microelectronic technology. Prior to FY 2026, this program was funded in PE 0601101E, Project ES-02.

The Compartmentalization and Privilege Management (CPM) program is developing new system frameworks, architectures, and tooling to provide fine-grained, least-privileged compartmentalization that enables prevention and containment of cyber attacks. Today's information systems are structured around a monolithic core, the kernel, that operates within a single protection domain at a single high privilege-level. A monolithic kernel contains many separate components without protection boundaries between them. A single compromise anywhere in the system allows attackers effectively unlimited access through an extended sequence of exploits, privilege escalation, and lateral motion. CPM is developing technologies and tools to compartmentalize large, legacy software systems automatically and designing processor architectures and system software to enforce a compartment and privilege-level regime. CPM tools and architectures will prevent initial penetrations from propagating into successful cyber attacks. Prior to FY 2026, this program was funded in PE 0601101E, Project ES-02.

The Disruptive Microtechnologies Sciences Studies and Concepts will examine the fundamental science needed to advance disruptive microtechnologies. This program will also examine ways to take advantage of commercial scaling while building in superior capabilities for defense systems through design, integration, and hardware security. These studies may lead to the development of new programs in these areas.

Understanding the Fundamental Limits (i.e., achievable boundaries) of scientific principles, processes and technologies is critical to better anticipate technological surprise for our adversaries and ourselves. This thrust explores boundaries across fields such as physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, and engineering to address critical questions for national security, addressing foundational theory and approaches that include, for example, the fundamental limitations of optical technologies, potential implications for basic biology on national security, and the ability for modeling and simulation to provide a better understanding of complex systems. Prior to FY 2026, this program was funded in PE 0601101E, Project MS-01.

The Molecular Systems and Materials Assembly thrust is exploring new approaches for the synthesis, assembly, characterization and application of molecules and materials for a variety of DoD applications from the atomic to the product scale. Ultimately, materials and methods developed in this thrust will support a wide range of DoD applications that will leverage novel materials to extend the range, duration, and capabilities of DoD systems and the warfighter. Through control of the arrangement, interactions, and assembly of atoms and molecules, new materials and manufacturing processes are being developed to address long-standing challenges in supply chains, logistics, and sustainment while simultaneously enhancing the warfighter's capabilities on the battlefield. Efforts in this thrust range from fundamental science to better understand the chemistry and physics related to each application, to developing means to utilize such capabilities in future test systems and prototype devices. Prior to FY 2026, this program was funded in PE 0601101E , Project MS-01.

The grounds for strategic surprise are often realized through the discovery of unifying principles, novel fundamental limits, and unexpected connections between nominally disparate fields. Examples include new fundamental limits of sensing and information gathering capabilities enabled by multimodal sensor networks and new avenues to high performance information processing by encoding information within dynamical physical or biological systems. This thrust explores emergent capabilities and universal themes at the interface of quantum science, mathematics, nanoscience, and materials science to develop novel approaches to critical national security needs. Focus areas include harnessing the universal principles of turbulence from new forms of simulation for high complexity physical systems; systemic discovery of materials with desired properties; the analysis of new scientific and technological ideas of importance to national security. Prior to FY 2026, this program was funded as Emerging Opportunities in Materials Science in PE 0601101E, Project MS-01.

The Simulating Microbial Systems (SMS) program is developing the general capability to simulate microbial cell function and behavior to prevent strategic surprise. SMS is investigating combinations of computational advances with data acquisition techniques to advance the state of the art of cellular modeling. Bringing together communities in cell modeling, computational techniques, and wet lab measurements, this program will build from partial physics-based models of a minimal synthetic cell to more complete and faithful simulations of a DoD-relevant organism. SMS will experimentally evaluate simulations via milestones and pressure tests that relate to both general cell simulation and tailored stakeholder use cases. SMS is postured to be a valuable tool for acceleration of medical countermeasure developments and biomanufacturing. Additionally, the program will provide a baseline for further simulation development and importantly will provide the DoD and its stakeholders the ability to run microbial simulations to prevent surprise. Prior to FY 2026, this program was funded in PE 0601117E, Project MED-01.

DoD warfighters are often required to perform complex tasks in a high-stress situation. Warfighters under stress can make poor decisions with immediate and/or lasting consequences that may also contribute to long-term trauma. The CoasterChase program seeks to evaluate host response to stimulation of the digestive tract. The program will explore stress response to improve decision making and reduction of long-term trauma response with a combined sensing and stimulation ingestible device. The program aims to understand behavioral and physiological biomarkers of stress and inform device design parameters. Ultimately, the technology will enable improved memory retention, reduced effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), maintenance of immune defense, and regulation of metabolism in austere domains. Prior to FY 2026, this program was funded in PE 0601117E, Project MED-01.

*Formerly Modernized Field Anesthesia The Anesthetics for Battlefield Care (ABC) program aims to produce safe, battlefield-ready anesthetics to reduce the trauma associated with injury and improve combat casualty outcomes. Current therapeutics that enable life-saving interventions and wound stabilization must be used in hospitals or highly monitored settings due to their lack of safety. Prolonged peer or near-peer conflict could severely impact medical evacuation times, resulting in extended time before patients reach a hospital. The ABC program seeks to uncover mechanisms of anesthesia at multiple biological levels ranging from the molecular to the organismal. Novel treatments developed under the program will exhibit the desirable properties of anesthetics, including calming effects and loss of sensation and consciousness but will have vastly improved safety profiles, making them usable in the field by warfighters with minimal medical training. Prior to FY 2026, this program was funded in PE 0601117E, Project MED-01.

*Formerly Preventing Blood Stream Infections in Warfighters After Trauma Bloodstream infections (BSI) are a significant source of morbidity in service members that sustain combat-related injuries. Trauma temporarily degrades the efficacy of the host immune system thereby increasing the risk of life-threating opportunistic infections from fungi and bacteria that enter into the blood. If unchecked, bloodborne fungi and bacteria lead to debilitating conditions such as invasive fungal infections (IFI), sepsis, and shock. The Synthetic Hemo-technologies to Locate and Disinfect (SHIELD) program is developing a systems-level approach to prevent BSI in warfighters that suffer trauma from burn or blast. Prophylactic medical countermeasures circulating in the blood will be developed to bind infectious particles in the blood early and label pathogens for clearance and deliver drugs to destroy pathogens and/or restore healthy physiology. Ultimately, this program will develop novel technologies that will protect service members from morbidity and mortality associated with BSI. Prior to FY 2026, this program was funded in PE 0601117E, Project MED-01.

*Formerly Accelerated Training and Readiness Assessment The Objective Prediction of Team Effectiveness via Models of Performance Outcomes (OP TEMPO) program seeks to advance technologies to drive efficiency and efficacy of military operator preparation and expertise building. This program seeks to understand fundamental biological processes to support real-time physiological assessment, performance diagnostics, and objective prediction of warfighter and team proficiency, with the ultimate goal of improved DoD mission readiness and execution. Advances in this program will result in a significant enhancement to warfighter team performance by providing methods to determine teaming potential and actionable paths to optimal teaming. Prior to FY 2026, this program was funded in PE 0601117E, Project MED-01.

The Combatting Anti-Microbial Resistant Pathogens program is investigating fundamental methods for using preexisting host machinery as a technology to create medical countermeasures that degrade or deactivate pathogen targets. The DoD has long recognized the warfighter's outsized risk of exposure to biological threat agents and to infectious disease, including the increasing prevalence of antimicrobial-resistant (AMR) organisms that are ranked as a Tier 1 threat to the U.S. military. Similarly, the danger posed by bacterial biothreats persists with few countermeasures available. Key advances expected from this research include identifying methods to discover and develop new classes of chimeric therapeutics for AMR bacteria, bacterial biothreats, and other DoD-relevant diseases and threats. These approaches represent a significant departure from conventional therapeutics, which typically rely on a limited number of small molecules with a narrow set of targets and mechanism of action. Advances in this area may be applied to the mitigation of known, new, and emerging diseases that impact military readiness and pose a global health threat. Prior to FY 2026, this program was funded in PE 0601117E, Project MED-01.

Warfighters operate under extreme physiological conditions, sometimes with limited resources and manpower, and must acclimate quickly to changing operational needs. The Physiological Overmatch program is investigating innovative approaches to allow the warfighter to adapt rapidly to operational challenges during deployment by developing novel detection and treatment systems. The program will initiate work in aiding the deployed soldier's ability to resist fatigue, combat sleep deprivation, and maintain a high capacity for operational performance. This program will seek to understand the biological mechanisms of fatigue, which will enable improvements to warfighter health and operational performance. This approach represents a significant enhancement to warfighter performance by providing protection from impacts to operational readiness and provides information related to fatigue states and the ability to operate with prolonged sleep deprivation. Prior to FY 2026, this program was funded in PE 0601117E, Project MED-01.

The DoD will accelerate discovery and development by leveraging recent fundamental advances in biology to identify new capabilities and address medical science challenges encountered by warfighters. The Basic Operational Medical Science Studies and Concepts thrust will explore basic research for fundamental discoveries, tools, and applications critical to overcoming medical-related DoD challenges. This thrust will investigate approaches to addressing the Department's identified warfighter medical needs as they pertain to warfighter health, resilience, and performance against operational stressors. Technologies in this thrust will provide predictive and diagnostic tools, as well as develop prevention and recovery techniques.