Harnessing Complexity

For millennia, materials have mattered—so much so that entire eras have been named for them. From the Stone Age to the Bronze Age to the Iron Age and beyond, breakthroughs in materials have defined what was technologically possible and fueled revolutions in fields as diverse as electronics, construction and medicine. Today, DARPA is pursuing the next big advances in this fundamentally important domain.

The value of synthetic chemistry is far-reaching, ranging from medicines to advanced materials. While the field has developed rapidly over the last century, major challenges remain including the slow pace of discovery and limited reproducibility and scalability once a promising new molecule is identified.

Dr. John S. Paschkewitz joined DARPA as a program manager in April 2015. He is interested in new paradigms and approaches for the interactive design of complex physical systems and system-of-systems (SoS) architectures.

Dr. D. Tyler McQuade joined DARPA as a program manager in the Defense Sciences Office in 2013. In his current DARPA role as a Program Manager he is overseeing programs in the physical sciences area. Current programs tend to be process oriented and range from surface coatings to small molecule synthesis.