Defense Sciences Office (DSO) Office-wide BAA

Defense Sciences Office (DSO) Office-wide BAA is sponsored by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) - Defense Sciences Office (DSO). This Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) solicits proposals for innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances in science, devices, or systems for national security applications.

[](https://www. darpa. mil/about/offices/dso) ### About the Defense Sciences Office The mission of the Defense Sciences Office (DSO) is to identify and spearhead the next generation of scientific discovery to fuel innovation in research and development for the DOW.

DSO serves DARPA by developing and executing an aggressive and forward-leaning portfolio that expands the art of the possible across a broad set of technical areas. DSO aims to create strategic surprise advantage for the DOW by pushing technology toward its fundamental scientific limits.

We work to prevent technological surprise by understanding the path commercial research and development (R&D) is taking, anticipating that our adversaries will exploit available technology to develop new capabilities in the coming decades. In addition, DSO looks for transformative trends at the global scale and their potential impact on our nation.

To support its mission, DSO is interested in engaging with the R&D community to tackle complex challenges and develop impactful capabilities. DSO organizes its research portfolio into the high-interest thrust areas described below. **Materials, Manufacturing, and Energy Systems** Breaking the tensions between performance and efficiency for new materials, manufacturing flexibility, propulsion, and energy availability.

**Sensing, Measuring, and Affecting** Pushing the fundamental limits for orders-of-magnitude improvement in awareness, communications, and control. **Math, Computation, and Processing** Enabling quantum, and reimagining classical, computing for enhanced efficiency and new capabilities.

**Complex, Dynamic, and Intelligent Systems** Revolutionizing scientific methods for harnessing complex and adaptive systems, from materials to human-AI ecosystems. DSO Technical Office leadership is responsible for guiding and overseeing the research and development activities within specific technical areas. * Bartlett Russell, Ph.

D. , served as DSO’s deputy director from August 2022 - January 2025 and joined DARPA as a program manager in April 2019. Deputy Director, Defense Sciences Office (DSO) Jim Gimlett, Ph.

D. , has research interests which include quantum sensing and metrology, nanoscale engineered materials, collaborative autonomous systems for harsh environments, and novel data-efficient AI for modeling and controlling complex dynamic systems.

Assistant Director Program Management, Defense Sciences Office (DSO) Prior to joining DARPA, Scott Wenzel held multiple positions in the Department of the Army Program Executive Office, Enterprise Information Systems. Opportunities to engage include R&D programs and efforts, challenge competitions, and technology transition efforts for the Defense Sciences 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 DSO opportunity. _ DSO will issue individual DOs under this solicitation.

These opportunities will target specific technical domains important to our mission to pursue innovative research that leads to a prototype demonstration. | See Disruptioneering Deadline date: Sept. 29, 2026 Defense Sciences Office DSO is hosting an Information Session webcast on Aug.

24, 2026, to provide information on the objectives of the anticipated Resilient Disruption Opportunity. | See Event Deadline date: Aug. 17, 2026 Defense Sciences Office ### Pushing Technology's Limits Our DSO 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 DSO program.

_ The Automated Prediction Aided by Quantized Simulators (APAQuS) Disruption Opportunity seeks to develop data-informed techniques to predictively model turbulence, one of the most intractable and challenging problems in physics.

The Automated Discovery for Design and Control of Turbulent Systems (AutoDIDACTS) program envisions a different way forward, revolutionizing aeronautical design by pathfinding accurate, predictive, and generalizable principles to guide design exploration and innovation.

By accumulating precision ground-truth data from compact, tabletop turbulence simulators, the program will demonstrate data-informed development of macroscale principles and generalizable models. The goal of this Disruption Opportunity is to develop new cathodes capable of supporting EP thrusters operating on air or water for 1,000 hours or more while matching the performance of today’s cathodes operating on noble gases.

The Compositional Learning-And-Reasoning for AI Complex Systems Engineering (CLARA) Disruption Opportunity aims to create a theory-driven algorithmic, highly reusable, scalable foundation for high assurance plus broad applicability, useful for many crucial defense and commercial realms.

The Chemistries and monoLayers for Anti-aging Kinematics (CLOAK) Disruption Opportunity aims to develop methods to extend the lifetime of inertial sensors by covering or eliminating sensor surface and structural defects that can get worse with time. Possible approaches include atomic layer deposition of materials such as, but not limited to, self assembled monolayers (SAM).

### Brightest Minds in Science and Engineering Our DSO 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 DSO program manager or their research interests. _ Lt. Cmdr.

Robin Bonomi, M. D. , Ph.

D. , U.S. Navy Medical Corps, has research interests that include neuroimmune modulation, precision psychiatry, and molecular imaging technologies for brain-based behavioral health risk prediction and prevention. Carlo Scalo, Ph.

D. , has research interests which focus on numerical and theoretical modeling of high-speed boundary layer physics, linear and nonlinear acoustics, vortex dynamics, and turbulence. Michael McDonald, Ph.

D. has research interests that include plasma science, diagnostics, and engineering; spacecraft power, propulsion, and thermal management; and AI interpretability. Jim Gimlett, Ph.

D. , has research interests which include quantum sensing and metrology, nanoscale engineered materials, collaborative autonomous systems for harsh environments, and novel data-efficient AI for modeling and controlling complex dynamic systems. Thomas Schenkel, Ph.

D. , has research interests include radiation science, particle accelerators, quantum technologies, and concepts of information. Yannis Kevrekidis' work at DARPA will focus on new modeling approaches and algorithms arising from cross-fertilization between "traditional" applied mathematics and the novel capabilities afforded to modelers by data science and machine learning.

Keith Whitener, Ph. D. , has research interests that include catalysis, photochemistry and spectroscopy, and the chemistry and physics of novel classes of materials.

Benjamin Grosof, Ph. D. , has interests in artificial intelligence foundations that include meta logic programs; scalability; deeply combining logical knowledge representation and reasoning with machine learning and natural language (e.g., neuro-symbolic); explainability and interpretability; trustworthiness and critical thinking; autonomy, and human-machine interaction.

Sunil Bhave, Ph. D. , has research that explores the inter-domain coupling in opto-mechanical, spin-acoustic and atom-microelectromechanical systems (MEMS).

He aspires to leverage fundamental understanding of these coupled systems for improved inertial sensors. Andrew Detor, Ph. D.

, is interested in exploring new possibilities at the intersection of materials science, manufacturing, and system design to enable unmatched sustainability and performance in extreme environment applications. The research interests of Mukund Vengalattore, Ph. D.

, include harnessing principles of quantum science and non-equilibrium quantum dynamics to create new capabilities in the broad areas of quantum-enhanced sensors; positioning, navigation and timing (PNT); quantum information science and related quantum technologies. Tabitha Dodson, Ph. D.

, has interest areas which include advanced space payloads, electric propulsion, astrodynamics, nuclear thermal and nuclear electric propulsion, radioisotopes, advanced nuclear reactors (fission and fusion), plasma physics and plasma engineering, nuclear/quantum/particle physics, and hypersonics. Embark on a journey of innovation and impact! Tell us about your interest in DARPA.

**Please note: Fields marked with an asterisk are required. **