WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- The Pentagon is soliciting new technologies and materials and has opened a yearlong competition for the science and technology industry to offer ideas.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Wednesday announced more than 50 areas of interest in new materials, advanced mathematics, defense against weapons of mass destruction, applications of biology to defense applications and "novel technologies to improve the human consequences of transformation."
The list includes materials and enabling technologies for power generation and energy storage at all scales; materials and enabling technologies for efficient propulsion in all environments including space; and materials for ultra lightweight protection from blast and non-lethal weapons.
DARPA is also seeking unique approaches for pre-symptomatic diagnosis of disease and health; medical countermeasures against both known and unknown pathogens; remote detection/characterization of naturally occurring or engineered biological substances; accelerated, high-yield manufacture of biological therapeutics, including vaccines and immune modifiers; and new approaches for understanding and predicting the behavior of individuals and groups, especially those that elucidate the neurobiological basis of behavior and decision making.
In the field of advanced mathematics, it is looking for new ways to represent and analyze large and disparate data sets, electromagnetic modeling and simulation and quantum information sciences.
The call for white papers is open for a year. There are no specific cost or project duration requirements but DARPA anticipates funding 12- to 18-month initial study periods for promising and innovative technological proposals.
