DARPA Biological Technologies Office (BTO) Programs

DARPA Biological Technologies Office (BTO) Programs is sponsored by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). DARPA's Biological Technologies Office (BTO) solicits innovative research proposals leveraging biological properties and processes, including advances in AI and machine learning, to develop technologies that protect warfighters.

[](https://www. darpa. mil/about/offices/bto) ## About the Biological Technologies Office The Biological Technologies Office (BTO) leverages biological properties and processes to revolutionize our ability to protect the nation’s warfighters.

BTO harnesses advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to create new opportunities for transformative science across the biological spectrum. Warfighter health and well-being are critical to mission success.

BTO develops diagnostic and assessment systems to identify chemical and biological threats, medical countermeasures, and novel approaches to tactical care and warfighter performance and recovery on and off the battlefield.

BTO also leverages biological processes, technologies, and manufacturing opportunities to create resilient infrastructures and supply chains, protective solutions, and innovative sensors to ensure mission success in any location.

We develop foundational technologies to simulate and predict biological systems and outcomes (simulation, foundation models, data generation): * **Generate:**Vastly improving the quality and quantity of biological data while reducing costs; increasing speed and automation of cloud labs. * **Understand:**Exploring the state of the art and enlisting stakeholders to construct necessary research portfolio.

* **Simulate:**Enabling sequence to function and function to sequence that underpins whole cell modeling and cell-cell interactions. We explore solutions for warfighter readiness, health, and recovery, including medical countermeasures, diagnostics, health IT, and medical devices: * **Optimize:**Ensuring peak warfighter performance, both physical and cognitive, throughout all phases of a mission.

* **Prevent:**Protecting warfighters from any threat and advancing capabilities on the battlefield for immediate injury treatment. * **Restore:** Creating biotechnological approaches to provide tactical care and restore function to injured warfighters.

We develop solutions to support mission success, including, for example, fibers for garments and distributed forward manufacturing: * **Do:**Creating solutions that increase operational resilience and logistic security. * **Make:**Utilizing the advantages of biology to enable point-of-need production or strengthen existing supply chain for critical commodities.

**Strengthen:**Providing technologies that harden operations against disruption and expand capabilities in the field. **Transforming battlefield casualty care:** Critical steps of tactical combat casualty care that bridge the gap between injury on the battlefield and arrival at surgical care. | Learn more **DARPA Triage Challenge:** Transforming how medical responders triage in mass casualty incidents.

| Learn more BTO leadership is responsible for guiding and overseeing the research and development activities within specific technical areas. * Michael Koeris, Ph. D.

, focuses his research and teaching on all aspects of chemistry, manufacturing, and control for microbiome medicines; advanced cell and gene therapy approaches; and casualty care. * Rob Saperstein, Ph. D.

, served as a program manager for the Strategic Technology Office, where he led a portfolio of programs developing novel sensing, communications, and laser-based technologies for mission system applications.

Assistant Director Program Management, Biological Technologies Office (BTO) Prior to joining DARPA in 2020, Ryann Glaccum worked at a cybersecurity startup and spent most of her career in management consulting for U.S. government clients. Opportunities to engage include R&D programs and efforts, challenge competitions, and technology transition efforts for the Biological Technologies Office.

| See all DARPA Opportunities | RSS feed for Opportunities _Use these filters to narrow your results by research topic or date. Search by keyword to find your specific BTO opportunity. _ #### Office-wide BAA: Biological Technologies Office BTO is soliciting proposals that leverage biological properties and processes to revolutionize our ability to protect the nation’s warfighters.

| See BTO Deadline date: Sept. 30, 2026 Biological Technologies Office **Topic area 4:** Supports technologies for defense of humans and elements of the bioeconomy; **Topic area 5:** Supports technologies for human health and performance optimization. | See ERIS Deadline date: Oct.

31, 2031 Biological Technologies Office #### RFI: Multiscale Reasoning For Human Physiology BTO is issuing this Request for Information (RFI) to solicit input regarding emerging technologies, datasets, computational frameworks, artificial intelligence systems, and foundation models that enable multiscale reasoning across human physiology. | See BTO Deadline date: Aug.

20, 2026 Biological Technologies Office The Convergence program aims to integrate biology and engineering to develop advanced environmental biosensors designed to safeguard defense personnel. | See Program Deadline date: Aug. 12, 2026 Biological Technologies Office ## Pushing Technology's Limits Our BTO research programs are finite in duration, but the revolutionary advancements they drive create lasting change.

Learn more about recent and ongoing efforts across our key thrust areas. | See all DARPA programs _Use these filters to narrow your results by research topic or status. Search by keyword to find your specific BTO program.

_ The Anesthetics for Battlefield Care (ABC) program seeks to develop safe, battlefield-ready anesthetics in order to reduce injury-associated trauma and improve combat casualty outcomes. To achieve this goal, the program will seek to disentangle the poorly-understood neural and molecular mechanisms of anesthetics. Biological Technologies Office BTO seeks innovative agricultural defense solutions against natural and man-made threats.

Priorities include early warning systems, rapid countermeasures, crop protection, threat prediction, and attribution methods.

Biological Technologies Office The Assured Microbial Preservation in Harsh Or Remote Areas (AMPHORA) program seeks to develop a portable, cold chain free system that can preserve any microbe (bacteria, fungus, virus) from any sample, environment, or clinical setting, increasing the DOW's awareness of emerging threats and protect force health and readiness.

Biological Technologies Office This program aims to develop “probiotics” for military materiel using microorganisms that naturally occur on DOW assets to build protective communities. These probiotics will generate robust and beneficial coatings that prevent corrosion, decrease drag, or inhibit the growth of black mold on DOW assets.

Biological Technologies Office The Alert WARfighter Enablement (AWARE) program aims to develop a combination drug and device to non-invasively increase alertness following sleep loss in humans, without negative side effects such as anxiety, irritability, or euphoria, and with reduced addictive potential.

Biological Technologies Office ## Brightest Minds in Science and Engineering Our BTO program managers are visionary leaders whose experience spans industry, government, and academia. They conceive, plan, and oversee the high-risk R&D efforts for which we are best known. | See all DARPA program managers #### Search our Program Managers _Use these filters to narrow your results by research topic or date.

Search by keyword to find a specific BTO program manager or their research interests. _ Kyle M. Schwing, Ph.

D. , has research interests in complex systems that include network science, communication and teaming, the emergence of organization, and the evolutionary basis of social behavior. Russell Schwartz, Ph.

D. , has research interests which include developing algorithms, numerical methods, machine learning, and simulation methods for understanding complex biological systems. William Mounfield, Ph.

D. , has research interests that include materials science and engineering, chemical engineering, nanoporous materials, catalysis, and metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) with applications to national security challenges. Roozbeh Jafari, Ph.

D. , has research interests that include digital health technologies, wearable computing, biomedical signal processing, casualty care, and AI-driven physiological sensing systems. Retired Col.

Jeremy Pamplin, U.S. Army, has research interests which include telemedicine, clinical decision support, robotics, casualty care, and automation to support austere, disaster, and operational medicine. The research interests of Abhishek Singharoy, Ph. D.

, include statistical mechanics, molecular biology, hybrid modeling, and large-scale computer simulations. His areas of interest include Artificial Intelligence LLMs, and biological. Sushma Savarala, Ph.

D. , has expertise that spans regulatory affairs, product development, drug delivery, and innovation within the pharmaceutical and supplement industries. Her areas of interest include health, machine learning, and biomanufacturing.

Lt. Cmdr. Robert L.

Murray's interests include advancing innovation in medical triage, point of injury trauma care, and warfighter performance and protection. Jeffrey Zaleski, Ph. D.

, has research interests in the fields of metals in medicine, bioinorganic chemistry, synthetic chemistry, and materials. His areas of interest include health, chemistry, materials science, environment, and organics. Pedro Irazoqui, Ph.

D. , has research that is focused on the development of wearable and implantable wireless medical devices for treating diverse neural pathologies with a particular focus on epilepsy with areas of focus in Artificial Intelligence, biological, health, casualty care, and neuroscience. Mark Salvador, Ph.

D. , has research interests which include Earth observation and remote sensing, biosensing, and biocomputing. His areas of interest include algorithms, sensors, behavioral science, and synthetic biology.

Tiffany Prest, Ph. D. , has research interests that include leveraging machine learning, microfluidics, physics writ-large for microbial systems, as well as Supply Chain and Logistics, biological and environment.

Catherine Campbell, Ph. D. , has interests that focus on the analysis of population-based experiments designed to study both human and animal models of disease.

Matthew Pava, Ph. D. , is interested in biotechnologies that address challenges in infrastructure sustainment, emergent care for battlefield trauma, and mitigating the impact of sleep loss on health and human performance.

Rob Saperstein, Ph. D. , served as a program manager for the Strategic Technology Office, where he led a portfolio of programs developing novel sensing, communications, and laser-based technologies for mission system applications.

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