Episode 74: Young Faculty Award

Established in 2006, the Young Faculty Award (YFA) (https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/for-universities/young-faculty-award) program aims to identify and engage rising academics in early-career research positions - particularly those without prior DARPA funding - and expose them to Department of Defense (DOD) needs and DARPA's mission to create and prevent technological surprise. The YFA program provides high-impact funding toresearchers at U.S. institutions early in their careers to advance innovative research enabling transformative DOD capabilities. The long-term goal of the YFA program is to build a pipeline for the next generation of academic scientists, engineers, and mathematicians who will focus a significant portion of their career on DOD and national security issues.In this episode you'll hear from Dr. Rohith Chandrasekar (https://www.darpa.mil/staff/dr-rohith-chandrasekar), who oversees DARPA's YFA program, as well as from DARPA Program Managers Dr. Chris Bettinger (https://www.darpa.mil/staff/dr-christopher-bettinger) and Dr. Sunil Bhave (https://www.darpa.mil/staff/dr-sunil-bhave), who reflect on their experience as YFA awardees early in their academic careers and the opportunities it has afforded them.DARPA recently published the 2024 YFA Research Announcement that features almost two dozen new technical topics and an additional open topic covering six thrust areas specific to DARPA's Defense Sciences Office (DSO). To view the full 2024 YFA Research Announcement visit SAM.gov: https://sam.gov/opp/f2bf469a50e7433fa758f0125831754b/view (https://sam.gov/opp/f2bf469a50e7433fa758f0125831754b/view) or Grants.gov: https://www.grants.gov/search-results-detail/350899 (https://www.grants.gov/search-results-detail/350899). Executive summaries, which are encouraged, are due by Dec. 13, 2023, 4:00 p.m. ET. Full proposals are due Feb. 22, 2024, 4 p.m. ET.

Om Podcasten

DARPA’s podcast series, "Voices from DARPA," offers a revealing and informative window on the minds of the Agency's program managers. In each episode, a program manager from one of DARPA’s six technical offices—Biological Technologies, Defense Sciences, Information Innovation, Microsystems Technology, Strategic Technology, and Tactical Technology—will discuss in informal and personal terms why they are at DARPA and what they are up to. The goal of "Voices from DARPA" is to share with listeners some of the institutional know-how, vision, process, and history that together make the “secret sauce” DARPA has been adding to the Nation’s innovation ecosystem for nearly 60 years. On another level, we at DARPA just wanted to share the pleasure we all have every day—in the elevator, in the halls, in our meeting rooms—as we learn from each other and swap ideas and strive to change what’s possible.