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The DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA) is a flagship program that identifies and engages rising research stars in junior faculty positions at U.S. academic institutions and exposes them to DARPA's mission.
The 2026 YFA solicitation (DARPA-RA-25-02 series) explicitly lists AI-relevant research topics including interpretable reinforcement learning, logical AI, knowledge representation and reasoning, neuro-symbolic systems, foundation models for science, AI for the physical world, mathematical foundations of large models, and assured autonomy.
Awardees develop their research vision in partnership with a DARPA program manager and are positioned to compete for follow-on DARPA programs. The program provides ~$500,000 over a two-year base period with a possible third-year option, plus a Director's Fellowship of up to $500,000 for outstanding awardees. Strong fit for tenure-track AI, autonomy, and machine learning faculty within seven years of receiving a PhD.
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Search similar grants →According to the current listing, eligibility includes: Tenure-track Assistant or Associate Professors at U.S. institutions of higher education, within approximately seven years of receiving a PhD, who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents and have not previously received a DARPA YFA. Equivalent early-career researchers at U.S. nonprofit research institutions may also be eligible. Confirm the full requirements in the official notice before applying.
The current listing shows typical Young Faculty Award provides $500,000 over two years (base) with a potential third-year option of approximately $500,000, and an additional Director's Fellowship for top-performing awardees worth up to $500,000. Verify award ceilings, matching requirements, and allowable costs in the official notice.
Applications for DARPA Young Faculty Award 2026 for Early-Career AI and Autonomy Researchers are due June 30, 2026. Build your timeline backwards from this date to cover registrations, approvals, and final submission checks.
DARPA Young Faculty Award 2026 for Early-Career AI and Autonomy Researchers is funded by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Verify program details on the funder's official page before applying.
Start from the official opportunity page linked in this listing — it carries the sponsor's submission instructions.
The DOE INCITE (Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment) 2027 Call for Proposals invites scientific teams to apply for substantial allocations of leadership-class supercomputing time on the Frontier exascale system at Oak Ridge, the Aurora exascale system at Argonne, and the Polaris supercomputer at Argonne. The 2027 call opened in April 2026 with a June 15, 2026 close. Priority research areas include scientific modeling, simulation, data analytics, and artificial intelligence (including foundation models for science, ML-accelerated simulation, and large-scale ML training). Individual awards typically span 500,000 to 1,000,000 node-hours on Aurora and Frontier and 100,000 to 250,000 node-hours on Polaris, with multi-year allocations possible. Awards announced Fall 2026; access begins January 2027. Eligibility is global. The INCITE program is the principal mechanism for accessing DOE leadership computing facilities for groundbreaking AI-for-science research, including foundation model training, scientific reasoning model development, and large-scale AI-driven materials and biology discovery.
NSF TechAccess AI-Ready America is a major new initiative to establish AI-ready Coordination Hubs in every U.S. state and territory to expand access to AI knowledge tools training and capacity building. Announced March 25 2026 the initiative is a joint effort of NSF USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Department of Labor and Small Business Administration (SBA). Each Hub will connect local partners and coordinate AI deployment scale proven approaches based on state and local priorities and address three key gaps: workforce AI literacy small business and local government AI adoption and hands-on learning pathways. Up to 56 Hubs will be funded at up to $1 million per year for three years selected through three rounds of competition. An informational webinar is scheduled for April 14 2026. This is distinct from NSF ExpandAI which focuses on institutional AI research capacity building and from NSF Expanding AI Career which targets skilled technical workforce opportunities.
The DARPA Tactical Technology Office (TTO) Office-Wide Broad Agency Announcement seeks revolutionary research ideas in autonomous systems, AI-enabled mission systems, advanced weapons, ground systems, maritime systems, and space systems. The BAA uses a two-step process: researchers first submit Executive Summaries by April 17, 2026 at 4:00 PM ET, and DARPA responds with either encouragement or discouragement before inviting full proposals on a rolling basis until June 22, 2026. Research thrusts include AI for autonomous platforms in contested tactical environments, human-machine teaming for warfighting applications, AI-enabled autonomy for unmanned ground vehicles and maritime systems, AI for collaborative space operations, and AI-enabled mission planning and battle management. Programs span basic research through prototype demonstrations.
On June 1, DARPA and NSF announced AI Forge — a jointly governed forum that will fund university-led research on three thrusts: AI interpretability, AI control, and adversarial robustness. The RFI on sam.gov closes June 22, 2026, at 5:00 PM ET. Project Ventures awards run roughly \$750K to \$3M with one-year durations and multiple awards expected annually. Administration runs through a nonprofit, intellectual property will be shared via open-source licensing, and CAISI at NIST is the third partner. Here is what the 15 priority research challenges look like and how U.S. universities should respond.
Read articleDARPA and NSF launched a joint program on June 1 to fund university work on AI interpretability, control, and adversarial robustness. Awards run $750K to $3M+ per project, the forum launches this summer, and the universities listed in the AI Forge repository will sit closest to the money. The Request for Information closes June 22.
Read articleDARPA MTO opened six FY26 SBIR topics on May 27 with a June 24 deadline — nanopore proteomics, compact RF filters, 800°C ICs, passive thermal spreaders, radiation-hardened codesign, and low-resource computing. The topics read like a wishlist for the next decade of contested-environment microelectronics. Here is what each one is actually asking for, and how small businesses should triage the four-week window.
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