Opportunities for Funding and/or Engagement

Technologists, entrepreneurs, investors and researchers came together to discuss how advances in engineering and information sciences can be used to drive biology for technological advantage.

The mission of BTO is to foster, demonstrate, and transition breakthrough fundamental research, discoveries, and applications that integrate biology, engineering, computer science, mathematics, and the physical sciences. BTO’s investment portfolio goes far beyond life sciences applications in medicine to include areas of research such as human-machine interfaces, microbes as production platforms, and deep exploration of the impact of evolving ecologies and environments on U.S. readiness and capabilities.

“Biology is nature’s ultimate innovator, and any agency that hangs its hat on innovation would be foolish not to look to this master of networked complexity for inspiration and solutions.” – DARPA Director Arati Prabhakar, Testimony to Subcommittee on Intelligence, Emerging Threats and Capabilities, U.S. House of Representatives, March 26, 2014

This announcement seeks revolutionary research ideas for topics not being addressed by ongoing BTO programs or other published solicitations. Of particular interest are those proposals from entities (both small and large business) that have never received Government funding, or who do not normally propose to Government solicitations.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is soliciting innovative research proposals of interest to the Biological Technologies Office (BTO). Proposed research should investigate leading edge approaches that enable revolutionary advances in science, technologies, or systems at the intersection of biology with engineering and the physical and computer sciences. Specifically excluded is research that primarily results in evolutionary improvements to the existing state of the art. BTO seeks unconventional approaches that are outside the mainstream, challenge assumptions, and have the potential to radically change established practice, lead to extraordinary outcomes, and create entirely new fields.