1. Home
  2. Engage
  3. Voices From DARPA Podcast

Voices from DARPA Podcast

Voices from DARPA

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 will discuss in informal and personal terms why they are at DARPA and what they are up to.

Voices from DARPA aims to offer listeners insights into the “secret sauce” that has been integral to the nation’s innovation ecosystem for nearly sixty years, highlighting the institutional expertise, vision, processes, and history behind DARPA’s contributions. 

Episode 83: When Should Machines Decide?

What characteristics make a person trustworthy? Under what circumstances would a person delegate life or death decisions to artificial intelligence (AI)? Does it matter that AI systems reflect trustworthy humans’ decision-making preferences, morals, and ethics? If so, what characteristics are most important?

These are some of the fundamental questions DARPA researchers are exploring for the In the Moment (ITM) program, which aims to support the development of algorithms that are trusted to independently make decisions in difficult domains, particularly in significant trauma events such as battlefield triage.

DARPA’s research has identified the need for fundamentally different approaches to advance AI technology to a place where we’re willing to trust it and not be foolish to do so. Continuing themes from our mini-series on ELSI – ethical, legal, and societal implications of new technologies and capabilities – we meet with DARPA’s ITM program manager, Dr. Patrick Shafto, and the ITM performers and ELSI advisors, who break down how they’re tackling the fundamental question of alignment in the context of human decision-makers and autonomous decision-making tools.

In case you missed them, check out our previous ELSI series episodes at the following links:
Episode 79: Integrating ELSI
Episode 78: Introducing ELSI

Our special thanks to the following ITM performers and advisors for their contributions to this episode (in order of their appearance):

  • Alice Leung, RTX BBN
  • Joseph Cohn, SoarTech
  • Matthew Molineaux, Parallax Advanced Research
  • Arslan Basharat, Kitware Inc.
  • Jennifer McVay, CACI
  • Dave Cotting, Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA)
  • Sarah Daly, IDA
  • Lauren Diaz, University of Maryland Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security (ARLIS)
  • Ellie Tyler, ARLIS

Episode 83 posting date: October 24, 2024

 

Episode 82: Acquisition Awesomeness

In this episode, team members from DARPA’s Contracts Management Office – Office Director Effie Fragogiannis and Deputy Director Catherine Stevens, along with Senior Advisor Scott Ulrey – explore what it takes to innovate contracting processes and mechanisms to enable the development of breakthrough technologies at the speed of relevance.

From DARPA’s pioneering work with Other Transactions, to fast-pitch proposals, to the exploration of previously unrealized authorities, hear how the agency is breaking down the barriers of government contracting, providing companies a clearer path to the national security mission.

Show notes and links:

Acquisition Innovation

Collaborative Disruption at DoD – Kathleen Hicks – American Dynamism Summit

Acquisition Innovation: From Other Transactions to Fast-Pitch Proposals

Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Other Transactions Guide

DARPAConnect

Episode 82 posting date: September 26, 2024

 

Episode 81: DARPA Triage Challenge - Revolutionizing Triage

In this episode, Dr. Jean-Paul Chretien and Elissa Rupley from our Biological Technologies Office provide an exciting update from the recent DARPA Triage Challenge (DTC) workshop at the Guardian Centers in Perry, GA.

The DARPA Triage Challenge, or DTC, aims to drive breakthrough innovations in identification of “signatures” of injury that will help medical responders perform scalable, timely, and accurate triage. Of particular interest are mass casualty incidents, in both civilian and military settings, when medical resources are limited relative to the need.

We also hear from Alix Donnelly, from the U.S. Army's Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) and some of the participating DTC Team Members on their experience thus far in the competition.

There are still opportunities to get involved – listen to learn more!

Show notes and links:

DARPA Triage Challenge

Dr. Jean-Paul Chretien bio

DTC Workshop 1 highlight video

DTC YouTube Playlist

Episode 81 posting date: July 30, 2024

 

Episode 80: Decentralizing Chemistry

In this episode, Dr. Vishnu Sundaresan from our Defense Sciences Office highlights several technology programs designed to precisely control chemical processes to enable distributed, small-batch manufacturing of chemical products while retaining efficiencies of large-scale industrial production. Colloquially calling this portfolio “decentralized chemistry for everything,” the concept aims to shift the paradigm from a few centralized production facilities producing medicines in large batches and requiring a costly purification process, to direct manufacturing of pure pharmaceuticals via desktop printer-sized machines that would create — at the push of a button — doses of a variety of medicines whenever and wherever needed. Such a revolutionary capability – if successful - would circumvent brittle international chemical supply chains and would serve military members deployed in remote locations as well as benefit rural civilian communities.

Sundaresan describes programs aiming to achieve elements of this vision: Spin-COntrolled chemical Process Engineering (SCOPE), Recycling at the Point of Disposal (RPOD), and Establishing Qualification Processes for Agile Pharmaceutical Manufacturing (EQUIP-A-Pharma).

Listen to Sundaresan describe his journey to becoming a DARPA program manager, the fascinating world of controlling electron spins, and the ethical, legal, and societal challenges of preparing the market for such revolutionary tech.

Show notes and links:

Spin-COntrolled chemical Process Engineering (SCOPE)

Recycling at the Point of Disposal (RPOD)

Establishing Qualification Processes for Agile Pharmaceutical Manufacturing (EQUIP-A-Pharma)

Dr. Vishnu Sundaresan Bio

Episode 80 posting date: June 28, 2024

 

Episode 79: Integrating ELSI

In this episode, we’ll be taking a deeper dive into ELSI – ethical, legal, and societal implications of new technologies and capabilities – and specific examples of how DARPA programs have incorporated those considerations into their structure.

We’re highlighting three examples of how DARPA integrated ELSI throughout the program lifecycle via the counsel of experts from the medical, scientific, legal, and ethics communities to assist program managers and performers in identifying and mitigating any potential issues.

The first program, out of our Biological Technologies Office, is Safe Genes, which supported force protection and military health and readiness by developing tools and methodologies to control, counter, and even reverse the effects of genome editing—including gene drives—in biological systems across scales.

The second program, Urban Reconnaissance through Supervised Autonomy (URSA) from our Tactical Technology Office (TTO) aimed to enable improved techniques for rapidly discriminating hostile intent and filtering out threats in complex urban environments.

And, finally, the current In the Moment program in our Information Innovation Office (I2O) seeks to identify key attributes underlying trusted human decision-making in dynamic settings and computationally representing those attributes, to generate a quantitative alignment framework for a trusted human decision-maker and an algorithm.

Show notes and links:

Highlighted Programs:

In the Moment (ITM): https://www.darpa.mil/program/in-the-moment

Urban Reconnaissance through Supervised Autonomy (URSA): https://www.darpa.mil/program/urban-reconnaissance-through-supervised-autonomy

Safe Genes: https://www.darpa.mil/program/safe-genes

Safe Genes Publications:

Episode 79 posting date: May 16, 2024

 

Episode 78: Introducing ELSI

As a global leader in innovation, DARPA starts an average of 50 new programs each year. These programs span a variety of technical disciplines to develop breakthrough technologies for national security, all of which have the potential to raise ethical, legal, and societal implication – or, ELSI – considerations.

Taking time to consider ELSI’s role in a program can contribute to the responsible development of emerging technologies by guiding innovation, maximizing the potential application space, and facilitating dialogue with future end-users, and the public, to ensure diverse perspectives and implications are considered. It can improve research by fostering conversations that identify unknowns, anticipate consequences, and make design decisions to maximize benefits and opportunities and minimize risks and harms.

In this episode of Voices from DARPA, we’ll hear from DARPA Director, Dr. Stefanie Tompkins, to explain the agency's perspective on those implications, as well as Dr. Bart Russell, deputy director of the Defense Sciences Office, on what it would mean to incorporate ELSI across the agency more formally. Finally, Dr. Rebecca Crootof, DARPA’s inaugural ELSI Visiting Scholar, will discuss her journey to the agency and her approach to developing a process to ensure that ELSI can inform — and even improve —DARPA programs.

That sounds like a lot of responsibility, influence, and potential impact – for some, maybe, too good to be true?

Show notes and links:

Ethical, Legal, and Societal Implications of Emerging Technologies at DARPA

DARPA currently is seeking applicants for the 2025 ELSI Visiting Scholar. The deadline to apply is June 3, 2024.

Origin of the term ELSI: Three decades of ethical, legal, and social implications research: Looking back to chart a path forward

The piece references a class from Dr. Oona A. Hathaway

Episode 78 posting date: April 30, 2024

 

Voices from DARPA Podcast Episode 77: Meet DARPAConnect

Good ideas can come from anywhere, but what is the best way to find them, or help them find you?

In 2022, DARPA hit the road to find the answer. Comprising six regional events, DARPA Forward took the agency across the country to engage untapped talent and strengthen the nationwide innovation ecosystem. The event series offered a powerful lesson in breaking down barriers of entry in pursuit of national security breakthroughs.

To sustain this momentum, DARPA launched DARPAConnect, an initiative that aims to further broaden the agency’s reach and foster greater collaboration with underrepresented, diverse, and nontraditional institutions new to the national security space.

In this episode of Voices from DARPA, we’re taking a deep dive on DARPAConnect, talking with several of those involved in the effort to get a sense of how it all works. We’ll explore its goals, its offerings, and what success looks like at DARPA, home to some of the biggest – and riskiest – bets on U.S. technological innovation.

Show notes and links:

DARPAConnect website: https://www.darpaconnect.us/home

DARPAConnect email address: darpaconnect@darpa.mil

Episode 77 posting date: March 28, 2024

 

Voices from DARPA Podcast Episode 76: The Quantum Logician

In this episode we hear from quantum physicist Dr. Mukund Vengalattore, a program manager in DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office, who oversees a portfolio of fundamental research programs aimed at unlocking new quantum insights and overcoming challenges to enable revolutionary capabilities for defense. These include harnessing atoms and superconducting structures for novel sensing applications (imagine tiny, super-sensitive antennas, infrared detectors or gyroscopes that vastly outperform much larger antennas, IR cameras, and gyroscopes of today); developing better quantum bits (qubits) for quantum computing (including using photons to encode information in novel ways); enabling field-deployable, tactical-grade mobile atomic clocks for our troops; and discovering new quantum materials for applications ranging from quantum computing to biomedical imaging.

We’re also joined by Dr. Mikhail Lukin, professor of physics at Harvard University, who led a team on Vengalattore’s Optimization with Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum devices (ONISQ) program that made a major quantum breakthrough published in Nature recently. Lukin’s team exploited characteristics of Rydberg neutral atoms to create logical qubits and used them to demonstrate the first-ever quantum circuit, a key step to advancing novel quantum computing architectures (Vengalattore provides a primer on the Rydberg atomic state). You’ll also hear about “optical tweezers” – which use laser beams that can be controlled to precisely grab and move around individual qubits without destroying their quantumness — and how they helped enable the breakthrough. To read more about the ONISQ logical qubit breakthrough visit: https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2023-12-06

Normally, we’d recommend you jump right into the episode, but this time, a primer may be helpful. We suggest starting with our recent Quantum Mechanic episode before you take a deep technical dive to the subatomic level for a fascinating window on the vast frontiers of quantum exploration… and potential applications in the real world.

Episode 76 posting date: February 29, 2024

 

Voices from DARPA Podcast Episode 75: The Metamaterial Visionary

We usually think of materials based on our experience in the natural world. For example, something that’s light is usually fragile (like a feather) or something heavy is usually strong (like a brick). But what if we could engineer a material that had completely new characteristics that defied properties found in nature? Engineered materials, also known as metamaterials, allow us to do just that. DARPA Program Manager Dr. Rohith Chandrasekar in DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office has led programs designing metamaterials that revolutionize how light interacts with matter. His programs are enabling new concepts for improving Warfighter effectiveness and health on the battlefield with new optics and materials. In this episode, Dr. Chandrasekar discusses several of these programs including Enhanced Night Vision in Eyeglass Form (ENVision), which has developed metamaterials to replace heavy and bulky binocular-like night-vision goggles lenses with lightweight lenses providing more infrared information and near eyesight field of view, in a form factor like a pair of glasses. He also discusses his Coded Visibility program, which focused on developing novel obscurants (aka smoke) used on the battlefield to provide friendly forces with visibility of the environment, while simultaneously hiding them from detection by an adversary. The catch, however, is that the smoke particles needed to be safe to breathe and potentially even tunable using active sources. Finally, he talks about the Accelerating discovery of Tunable Optical Materials (ATOM) program. This effort seeks to identify new materials whose properties could be rapidly changed to enable different functions. Imagine a massive telephoto camera on the sideline of a sporting event replaced with a planar imaging system that could zoom, or a thin filter that can rapidly collect critical data across infrared bands for spectroscopy, all with no moving parts. Sounds like magic, but it’s not! Enjoy listening to DARPA’s Metamaterial Visionary.

Episode 75 posting date: January 18, 2024

 

Voices from DARPA Podcast Episode 74: Young Faculty Award

Established in 2006, the DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA) 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 to researchers 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, who oversees the YFA program, as well as from DARPA Program Managers Dr. Chris Bettinger and Dr. Sunil Bhave, who reflect on their experience as YFA awardees early in their academic careers and the opportunities it has afforded.

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 or Grants.gov: https://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.

Episode 74 posting date: November 21, 2023

 

Voices from DARPA Podcast Episode 73: The AI Cyber Challenge – CTF, Code, and Critical Infrastructure

Ahead of the AI Cyber Challenge (AIxCC) Open Track registration period, which begins December 1, 2023, this episode of Voices from DARPA features Perri Adams, DARPA’s program manager for the competition. Over the next two years, AIxCC will challenge teams to develop AI-driven systems to automatically find and correctly fix the critical code that underpins daily life. Adams shares the backstory for the AIxCC, discusses who she wants to compete (and why), and what’s at stake for cybersecurity.

Adams is joined by AIxCC collaborators from the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), a project of the Linux Foundation, and OpenAI. OpenSSF’s general manager Omkhar Arasratnam and OpenAI’s head of security Matt Knight discuss their roles in the challenge and impart advice to potential competitors.

For information on how to register to compete in the AI Cyber Challenge, visit AICyberChallenge.com.

Episode 73 posting date:October 20, 2023

 

Voices from DARPA Episode 72: Reinventing Microelectronics Manufacturing

Supply chain disruptions stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, among other issues, shined a bright light on the global reliance on microchips. In the United States, national recognition underscored the need to strengthen the domestic microelectronics industry, including on-shore fabrication and next-generation research, development, and capabilities.

Back in 2017, already recognizing that the microelectronics demand trajectory was straining both commercial and defense developments, DARPA launched the Electronics Resurgence Initiative (ERI) to address an increasing reliance on advanced electronics, exploding complexity of microsystems, offshore movement of advanced capabilities, and the emergence of hardware security threats. In 2022, the agency kicked off ERI 2.0, expanding the original effort to include reinvention of domestic microelectronics manufacturing.

DARPA’s 2023 ERI Summit, held Aug. 22-24, in Seattle, brought together more than 1,300 participants to discuss the challenges on the horizon. The conference spanned three jam-packed days of keynotes, panel discussions, workshops, and networking.

In this episode of Voices from DARPA, we've pulled from the more than 10 hours of presentations from leading voices across government, industry, and academia for a primer on the Summit's prevailing theme: what it means to redefine the future of microelectronics manufacturing.

For a deeper dive on ERI 2.0 and the ERI Summit, visit:

Episode 72 posting date:September 29, 2023

 

Voices from DARPA Podcast Episode 71: The Quantum Mechanic

In popular culture, quantum is a descriptive term often added to various technical topics and projects to make them sound cool. But what is quantum mechanics, really, and how do we know whether quantum technologies will transform computing, communications, sensing, and a host of other fields?

To find answers, join us for a new episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast series, where we hear from Dr. Joe Altepeter, a quantum physicist in DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO). Altepeter helps clarify what for most of us is a complicated subject, providing a basic understanding of quantum and describing his two DARPA programs focused on quantum computing. The first program, called Quantum Benchmarking, aims to estimate the long-term utility of quantum computers by creating new benchmarks, or yardsticks, that quantitatively measure how useful a quantum computer would be at solving problems we care about. The second related program, Underexplored Systems for Utility-Scale Quantum Computing (US2QC), seeks to determine if an underexplored approach to quantum computing is capable of achieving utility-scale operation (i.e., its computational value exceeds its cost) much faster than conventional predictions.

Buckle up and tune in for a fast-paced tutorial from DARPA’s quantum mechanic!

Episode 71 posting date:August 18, 2023



Voices from DARPA Podcast Episode 70: Innovating How We Innovate
 

There are many ideas in the world, but truly good ones are few and far between – especially when it comes to breakthrough technologies that can change the course of history. Surfacing these types of ideas calls for a constant infusion of fresh perspectives and imagination.

That’s why DARPA created the DARPA Innovation Fellowship, a two-year position for early career scientists and engineers. Fellows push the limits of existing technology by exploring new ideas for answering high-risk, high-reward “what if?” questions in the realm of national security. 

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast series, we hear from Dr. Jinendra Ranka, director of DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO), – which oversees the Innovation Fellowship Program – about how the program offers unique opportunities for Fellows to make connections, demonstrate what’s possible and take risks. We also speak with four Fellows from the program’s first cohort – Dr. Rebecca Chmiel, Lieutenant Krishnan (Krish) Rajagopalan, Dr. Allegra A. Beal Cohen and Dr. Alex Place – for their perspectives on what it takes to develop high-impact, exploratory technology efforts for the Department of Defense.

 

Episode 70 posting date: July 28, 2023

 

Voices from DARPA Podcast Episode 69: Demystifying Deepfakes
 

 

Generative artificial intelligence has captured the world’s attention after recent advances in the commercial sector. Its ability to create deepfakes, or highly realistic synthetic multimedia, has turned a once highly specialized skill into something as easy as clicking a button.

As a result, the threat of manipulated media –audio, images, video, and text – has increased while social media provides a ripe environment for viral content sharing. 

In this episode of Voices from DARPA, Dr. Wil Corvey, program manager for DARPA’s Semantic Forensics (SemaFor), discusses how the program goes beyond detection to delve deeper into understanding the intent behind manipulated media and how the SemaFor team is creating tools available for today’s analysts. Wil is joined by SemaFor researchers Arslan Basharat, assistant director of Computer Vision at Kitware Inc. and Luisa Verdoliva, professor at the University of Naples in Italy.

“I think what we're headed towards is both an assured application of the [deepfake analysis] technology but also a socially responsible application due to the robust discussion that we're having around AI and its potential use for social good,” said Corvey.

Episode 69 posting date: June 16, 2023
 

 

Voices from DARPA Podcast Episode 68: Space Manufacturing

Imagine you are going to space. There is a long list of items and supplies you definitely will need, but there is an even longer list of things you might need, depending on how your mission progresses. This includes known unknowns like fuel for unplanned maneuvering, replacement parts or tools, and a wide range of other products that could be useful, but may not be utilized. The current paradigm is to pack everything you might possibly need, but this approach is complex and logistically burdensome.

Imagine instead that you pack only fermentation equipment, feedstocks, and a freezer full of microbes that each convert the feedstock into a different useful molecule, material, or product so you have everything you might need and can produce it on demand.

Or what if you could enable a new paradigm where future space structures – that are much too large to launch on a rocket – are built off-Earth using materials and designs optimized for the space environment?

This Voices from DARPA episode features discussions with Dr. Andy Detor, program manager in DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office, as well as Dr. Anne Cheever, program manager in the Biological Technologies Office. Detor runs the Novel Orbital Moon Manufacturing, Materials, and Mass Efficient Design, or NOM4D program. Cheever heads up the Biomanufacturing: Survival, Utility, and Reliability beyond Earth, or B-SURE, program. While neither program is conducting manufacturing in space, both are supporting proof of concept studies to determine whether it might be feasible in the future.

Episode 68 posting date: May 18, 2023

Voices from DARPA Podcast Episode 67: Wireless Power Beaming

“As we look…decades in the future, this could fundamentally change things as we know it across society. So much of our society is tied to our ability to effectively use energy. And what we're trying to do is add a new tool to spread energy to more people more flexibly in order to create a better society, as well as open up a lot of opportunities for the tough challenges that our military has to face.” -Col Paul Calhoun, DARPA Program manager

This 13-minute episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast series explores the possibility of an “energy web” that, much like the World Wide Web allows for near-instantaneous communication, could instantly distribute energy from remote, currently untapped sources. DARPA Program Manager Col Paul Calhoun describes his bold POWER program, aimed at leveraging power beaming for energy transport through a multi-path network.

The project team plans to demonstrate long-distance wireless power transmission that can power an aircraft. Such a system might also one day readily distribute abundant, far-flung wave or solar-generated power to places in need. “If we can get to a world where we are no longer tying energy production to carbon…it allows us to unlock production without some of the negative impacts,” says Calhoun.

Episode 67 posting date: April 20, 2023

Episode 66: How to Create AI Technology We Can Trust

At a time when the race to create the best artificial intelligence-enabled technology is at its fiercest, experts at DARPA say we need to recalibrate the direction of research in the field.

Within DARPA’s Information Innovation Office, one of the research thrusts focuses on proficient artificial intelligence (AI), which the office defines as how to build AI-enabled systems that we can trust with our lives and not be foolish to do so.

This episode of Voices from DARPA features an excerpt from a recent presentation by Dr. Kathleen Fisher, the director of the Information Innovation Office, which is leading DARPA’s initiative to explore future directions of AI for national security, called AI Forward.

Fisher delves into the topic of trustworthy AI for adversarial environments and what it will take to create technology that is more than a tool but rather a true partner to people.

To access Fisher’s entire presentation, visit our YouTube page. DARPA will also accept applications for its AI Forward Workshops through March 20, 2023. To learn how you can apply, visit: https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/ai-forward

Episode 66 posting date: March 16, 2023

Episode 65: A Sprint to Tomorrow, Powered by Teamwork

If it seems like microchips have been a consistent conversation topic lately, it’s for good reason. Supply chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors created a new level of awareness about microelectronics. However, the research and development that advance these increasingly powerful technologies goes back decades, with DARPA teaming up to play a key part.

This episode of Voices from DARPA examines the journey and impact of one collaborative effort that DARPA’s been part of since the late 1990s. The latest program iteration, the Joint University Microelectronics Program 2.0 (JUMP 2.0), recently kicked off with an expanded mission.

This episode features Dr. Dev Palmer, a longtime program participant now overseeing DARPA’s JUMP 2.0 efforts as the deputy director of DARPA’s Microsystems Technology Office; Dr. Adam Knapp, the JUMP 2.0 program manager at longtime partner institution the Semiconductor Research Corporation; and Dr. Tajana Simunic Rosing, a program performer who has been involved in every iteration of what is now JUMP 2.0.

All three of these experts bring rich, diverse perspectives to an effort that is critical to the future – and that serves as a bedrock for broader initiatives to strengthen U.S. leadership in microelectronics. As they share in this episode, all three are focused on success via ambitious collaboration.

Reference

Find out even more about JUMP 2.0 and DARPA’s broader Electronics Resurgence Initiative (ERI) – and be part of the dialogue – this summer at the ERI Summit.

Episode 65 posting date: February 23, 2023

Episode 64: Join the Challenge and Help Save Lives

For this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, we will be hearing from CDR Jean-Paul Chretien about the newly-launched DARPA Triage Challenge. Previous DARPA challenges have contributed to the self-driving car evolution, responsive space launch, and robotics for disaster response and recovery, and we expect equally transformational results from this one.

The DARPA Triage Challenge will use a series of challenge events to spur development of novel physiological features for medical triage. The effort aims to drive breakthrough innovations in identification of “signatures” of injury that will help medical responders perform scalable, timely, and accurate triage. Of particular interest are mass casualty incidents, in both civilian and military settings, when medical resources are limited relative to the need.

Reference

Convertino, V.A. et al. (June 2016) ‘The Compensatory Reserve For Early and Accurate Prediction Of Hemodynamic Compromise: A Review of the Underlying Physiology’ SHOCK 45(6):p 580-590

Episode 64 posting date: January 19, 2023

Episode 63: So Many Maps, So Little Time: Using AI to Locate Critical Minerals

For this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, we talk with DARPA program manager Dr. Joshua Elliott, and Dr. Graham Lederer, research geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey about a recent DARPA competition geared at automating elements of the U.S. Geological Survey’s critical mineral assessment workflow.

The experts discuss the motivations behind the competition, plans for next steps on implementing the resulting solutions, and the potential artificial intelligence tools can have on the U.S. supply chain. Members from the first place teams from each of the sub-challenges also discuss their winning solutions.

Episode 63 posting date: December 16, 2022

Episode 62: The Model (& Simulation) Researcher

For this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, we talk with new DARPA program manager, Dr. Alvaro Velasquez, a self-described “researcher at heart.” His current research interests are at the intersection of formal language theory and machine learning for sequential decision-making.

Velasquez discusses his path to DARPA and how it serendipitously led him to inheriting management of a new AI program called Assured Neuro Symbolic Learning and Reasoning (ANSR). He also describes his idea for his next project, which will look at neuro symbolic knowledge transfer to accelerate the adoption of machine learning outcomes within modeling and simulation for military systems.

Episode 62 posting date: November 17, 2022

Episode 61: Manta Ray: Unleashing Robotic Undersea Endurance

In this 13-minute episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast series, we discuss DARPA’s Manta Ray program which seeks to demonstrate innovative technologies allowing payload-capable autonomous unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) to operate on long-duration, long-range missions in ocean environments without the need for on-site human logistics support or maintenance. Such UUVs would offer the potential for persistent operations in forward environments, allowing host vessels increased freedom of operational flexibility while providing traditional servicing ports with relief of workload. They could also enhance our understanding of the oceans.

We talk with Manta Ray Program Manager Kyle Woerner and Sandia National Laboratory's Kelley Ruehl who is advising on energy harvesting aspects of the program. “Manta Ray Project really came out of the need for understanding more about the ocean environment and being able to have underwater vehicles that last longer than the order of a couple of hours or a couple of days,” said Woerner about his goal of “an autonomous underwater vehicle that’s out operating on its own, harvesting energy and completing whatever mission it's been given.”

Episode 61 posting date: October 20, 2022

Episode 60: The Neuroethicist

For this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, we spoke with Dr. Joeanna Arthur who joined DARPA in August 2022 as a program manager, or PM, in the Biological Technologies Office. Her research interests include operational neuroscience, human performance optimization and predictive analytics, leveraging advances in cognitive and behavioral science.

We asked Dr. Arthur to provide her perspective as a new PM, what sparked her interest in the field of neuroscience, and what she hopes to accomplish in her limited tenure.

Episode 60 posting date: September 22, 2022

Episode 59: DARPA Forward

For this 17- minute episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, we sat down with DARPA Director, Dr. Stefanie Tompkins, to discuss the agency’s upcoming DARPA Forward regional event series. Held on leading research and development campuses throughout the United States and open to all, these conferences will connect DARPA leaders with new communities of talent and partnerships.

We also spoke with Dr. Max Shulaker from MIT, who had an early-career opportunity to join the DARPA innovation ecosystem, and Lucia White, graduate student at the University of Wisconsin and member of the U.S. Space Force, who will participate in DARPA Forward as a 2022 DARPA Riser.

Episode 59 posting date: August 11, 2022

Episode 58: The Cryptoprivacist

In this approximately 17-minute episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, we explore the portfolio of cryptography expert, privacy advocate, and DARPA program manager, Dr. Joshua Baron. Baron details the possibilities – and potential pitfalls – of technologies such as zero knowledge proofs and blockchains. He also provides a sneak peek into new research that will preserve one’s privacy by rapidly making complex computations on a mobile device.

“I'm most interested in the national security community's relationship with the world,” said Baron. “When I talk about privacy issues, what we address [at DARPA] certainly impacts the Department of Defense community but also the larger American and even global communities.”

Episode 58 posting date: July 21, 2022

Episode 57: Unmasking Misinformation & Manipulation

In this 20-minute episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, we discuss DARPA’s Influence Campaign Awareness and Sensemaking (INCAS) program. Adversaries exploit misinformation and true information through compelling narratives propagated on social media and online content. INCAS seeks new tools to help analysts quickly identify geopolitical influence campaigns amidst today’s noisy information environment and find better ways to determine the impacts of such propaganda.

We talk with leaders of teams working on aspects of the INCAS program – including identifying narratives using lessons from the entertainment industry and exploring how different people react to the same messages – in addition to INCAS Program Manager Brian Kettler. As Kettler says: “Propaganda is not new, but the speed and scale of it is new. The information ecosystem is rapidly evolving. Our adversaries are getting better all the time.”

Episode 57 posting date: June 16, 2022

Episode 56: The Future of Food: Meals from Microbes

Did you know that there’s more energy in the packaging of an MRE than what’s in the food?

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, we’re discussing “The Future of Food: Meals from Microbes.”

First, we will hear from Dr. Molly Jahn, program manager for the Cornucopia program, which seeks to enable food production on-demand and on-site.

Next, we’ll speak with Dr. Blake Bextine, who manages the ReSource program, and Dr. Stephen Techtmann from Michigan Technological University, who serves as a program performer on their unique approaches to this daunting problem. That program aims to turn military waste – including plastics – into oils, lubricants, and food.

Reference

FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO. 2021. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021. Transforming food systems for food security, improved nutrition and affordable healthy diets for all. Rome, https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/nutritionlibrary/publications/state-food-security-nutrition-2021-en.pdf?sfvrsn=84e0ae0c_12&download=true

Episode 56 posting date: May 26, 2022

Episode 55: Sensorized Prosthetics

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, we’ll hear from some of the key stakeholders -- including Drs. Al Emondi and Dustin Tyler -- related to the DARPA Hand Proprioception and Touch Interfaces program, or HAPTIX for short. The goal of HAPTIX, which is part of DARPA’s extensive Neurotechnology portfolio, is to create and transition clinically relevant technology in support of wounded warriors suffering from single or multiple limb loss.

We discuss the program’s impact, not only on from a scientific perspective, but more importantly, from a human one. We’ll also learn about various regulatory aspects of the work; ethical, legal and societal implications; and what’s next in the field of prosthetics.

Episode 55 posting date: April 4, 2022

Episode 54: Climate Tipping Points

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, we’ll explore a new program with the goal of better identifying and predicting sudden and catastrophic climate change tipping points. Such events could cause major and abrupt disruption to both weather and life on our planet. DARPA’s AI-assisted Climate Tipping-point Modeling (ACTM) program aims to advance artificial intelligence and machine learning to model complex processes that affect Earth’s climate, looking for signs of it going disastrously awry. You’ll hear from the program manager and people working on aspects of the problem (from Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and the University of Exeter), as well as learn about one especially troubling possibility – the slowing, or even entire collapse, of the Atlantic Ocean’s circulating current (with input from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution). “DARPA’s job is to help the United States avoid strategic surprise,” says ACTM program manager Joshua Elliott, “and in my mind there’s no bigger risk or strategic surprise than a sudden and massive and irreversible change in some of the key Earth systems that we rely on for survival.”

Episode 54 posting date: March 14, 2022

Episode 53: So, You Want to Become a DARPA Program Manager?

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, listeners will hear a “best hits” medley from program managers (PMs), who since 2016 have chronicled in the podcast their joy, sense of accomplishment, scientific stimulation, privilege to influence entire fields of research and development, sense of mission as they further the cause of national defense and security, fun, and, in short, the overall awesomeness of their jobs. Every program manager arrives at DARPA with an expiration date on their badges. It’s a short-term deal that constantly brings in new blood and is routinely cited as part of DARPA’s “special sauce.” Those who become PMs know their jobs likely will end three to five years after they start. Yet so many of them say there is no better job and that they wouldn’t have it any other way. Their collective message is that being a DARPA PM can be a dream job for just about any scientist or engineer, whether they are only beginning to rev up their careers; already making a name for their themselves in an academic, start-up, industry, or government setting; or in search of a second-career to apply the experience and wisdom they have accrued over previous decades of work. At the end of the podcast, DARPA director and former program manager Stefanie Tompkins encapsulates the collective message of the many DARPA voices in this episode: “The program manager is the center of DARPA. The PMs, each and every one of them, has a chance to change the world.”

Episode 53 posting date: January 12, 2022

Episode 52: The Embedded Entrepreneurship Initiative

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, listeners will learn about an emerging component of DARPA’s institutional culture for delivering technologies that strengthen the nation and redefine what is possible. Called the Embedded Entrepreneurship Initiative (EEI), this effort is designed to help creative scientists and engineers usher their new high-technology visions all of the way to real in-field, hold-in-your-hand, useful-in-the-world technologies. The mission of EEI, now entering its second year following a pilot phase, is to provide early-stage technology-development teams with veteran innovators who bring with them the proven business savvy it takes to make it through the proverbial Valley of Death. That’s when anything from insufficient funding, missed deadlines, unexpected supply-chain issues, intellectual property disputes, market fluctuations, a federal policy change, or any number of other hazards can kill off even the best of technology ideas. Listeners will hear from Kacy Gerst, DARPA’s Chief of Commercial Strategy; Scott Cunningham, a Senior Commercialization Advisor with In-Q-Tel-Emerge, a technology-acceleration organization that is partnering with DARPA to make EEI work; and Jeff Conroy, CEO of Embody, an emerging biotechnology company that credits EEI with accelerating its success in launching what is now its first FDA-approved biomedical technology for improving ligament and tendon repair, a common need for athletes and military personnel. Gerst is happy to note that EEI already is working with more than 50 entrepreneurial teams and she expects the initiative to ramp up over the next few years to a portfolio of 150 such teams.

Episode 52 posting date: December 1, 2021

Episode 51: The Cybersecurity Sleuth

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Sergey Bratus, a program manager since 2018 in the agency’s Information Innovation Office, shares his educational and professional journey, beginning in the late 1970s as a computer-smitten middle-schooler in the former Soviet Union and leading to his current and prominent role among those who aim to render the increasingly prevalent and perilous software, hardware, and networks in our lives much safer to use. His fascination with computer security occurred in the 1990s as a mathematics graduate student when a computer he was programming and responsible for at Northeastern University in Boston was taken over by a hacker. “I probably owe whoever did that a beer,” Bratus tells listeners. Why? Because it set him on his life’s mission to learn as much as he can about the vulnerabilities of software and hardware with the goal of learning how to best minimize or eliminate those vulnerabilities. Noting his embrace of the hacker community for its deep and innovative expertise in this context, Bratus tells podcast listeners about how the programs he oversees at DARPA could help reduce or entirely remove even some of the most stealthy and unexpected vulnerabilities that reside in software and its logical, computational, and mathematical foundations.

Episode 51 posting date: November 1, 2021

Episode 50: The Photonicist

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Gordon Keeler, a program manager since 2017 in the agency’s Microsystems Technology Office, takes listeners on a scenic tour of his efforts to integrate electrons and photons in ways that do more computing, more sensing, more decision-making, and more artificial intelligence in cheaper, smaller, lighter, and more energy-efficient packages than has been possible previously. His work is a showcase of what technology insiders refer to as SWaP-C, which stands for Size, Weight and Power, and Cost. Innovations that shrink one or all of those aspects of a technology can be far more important to realizing practical, affordable technologies and capabilities than the invention itself. As Keeler explains how these and other technology drivers unfold in the half-dozen electronic, photonic, and optoelectronic programs he oversees, he also reveals what inspired him to give up the stable and secure job he held for 14 years before arriving at DARPA. “I had no doubt really in my mind, DARPA clearly was the pinnacle of doing really innovative scientific research and development and leading the community to go do new things,” Keeler tells listeners. “I wanted to make an impact and DARPA was clearly a way to do that.”

Episode 50 posting date: October 12, 2021

Episode 49: A Decade of Living Foundries

This episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast takes listeners on a tour of an audacious, decade-long project to merge biology and engineering into one of the most powerful engines of molecular invention the world has known. Although plenty of work remains to be done, the program, Living Foundries, is winding down to a close. But not before its community of research performers and collaborators already has delivered a new and versatile biotechnology platform whose consequences have begun to ripple out. New companies. Follow-on investments. Chemical- and materials-based technologies for the Department of Defense … and perhaps one day for the public at large. Featured in the podcast are reflections form three of the program managers who have been stewards of the program, two research performers who helped make real the vision of Living Foundries, and even the sound of one potential Living Foundries product doing what it does best.

Episode 49 posting date: September 15, 2021

Episode 48: The Inner-Machine Therapist

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast John-Francis Mergen, a program manager since 2020 in the agency’s Information Innovation Office, recounts how his interest in science took off as a child when he received a gift of a low-power magnifier from a family friend who was a geologist. From that gift, Mergen says, he learned about the power of observation and of the mindset one brings into that elemental component of the scientific enterprise. For his part, Mergen has spent a lot of time observing the complex ebbs and flows of data packets, which are mobile portions of information that race through every which way through the internet and then get reassembled on your computer into a web page, a picture, or an email message. One of the first DARPA programs Mergen started to run last year aims to optimize the efficiency of packet traffic and management based on dynamic prioritization of information categories, such as text, voice or images, while preserving privacy and confidentiality for the sender and recipient of those packets. Another program Mergen runs is anticipating emerging threats associated with the exploding population of internet-connected-devices—the Internet-of-Things (IoT)—with an eye on security-enhancing communications protocols. Mergen has skin in the game: he says he has several hundred devices (including an internet-connected beehive!) at home that are connected to the Internet. One of his newest programs, if successful, will deliver technology that applies artificial intelligence to manage IoT devices so that they automatically and securely configure themselves, in his words, “in a way that is useful but not in a way that can be used” by adversaries, criminals, and others seeking to do harm. In a program just getting underway, Mergen envisions vehicles, manufacturing tools, and other technologies with a kind of self-awareness, which would be based on the many sensors, actuation devices, and computers in their designs, along with the ability to leverage this gadget-based self-awareness into automatic adjustments of operations. The payoff? Mergen says it could lead to more capable and longer-lasting technologies that could bring out their own best in changing circumstances. One possibility is that already-deployed technologies would “discover” capabilities they have in specific situations that not even their designers had in mind.

Episode 48 posting date: August 19, 2021

Episode 47: The Life Saver

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast Tristan McClure-Begley, a program manager since 2017 in the agency’s Biological Technologies Office, recounts how he knew he wanted to be a biologist at the age of 7. That, thanks to an engineer dad, a psychologist mom, and a catalytic high-school teacher, all of whom ignited Tristan’s curiosity. Now Tristan is a program manager overseeing an ambitious portfolio of programs that is expanding the boundaries of battlefield medicine as well as neurocognitive science and practice. One of his programs is laying ground work for molecular tissue-stabilization interventions to help severely injured warfighters survive long enough to receive the medical treatment that can save them. In another program he is overseeing, researchers are investigating how peripheral nerve stimulation can improve cognitive tasks such as learning a new language. Two other programs could redefine what is possible in pharmaceutical science and practice. One of these is opening pathways to so-called polypharmaceutical treatments in which a single therapeutic agent intervenes in multiple cellular or physiological targets associated with a disease. The current paradigm centers on developing drugs that interact with a single, disease-relevant target. Another of Tristan’s ambitious programs is devoted to warfighters who are suffering from post-traumatic stress and other psychiatric challenges. Researchers working on this project are diving into the clinical successes of hallucinogenic substances, such as LSD and psilocybin, with an eye on identifying new agents that can deliver therapeutic value but without the hallucinogenic effects, which are not suitable for many patients. Says Tristan, “I pretty much want to learn everything about everything.” That’s how you get a DARPA program portfolio like his.

Episode 47 posting date: July 26, 2021

Episode 46: The Jet Packer

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Alexander (Xander) Walan, a program manager since 2017 in the agency’s Tactical Technology Office, pegs the source of his lifelong fascination with aircraft and flight to the Chicago Air and Water Shows his dad took him and his four siblings to when they were children. At DARPA, he has applied that interest, his training in aeronautical engineering, a 22-year career in the Air Force overseeing some 70 technology-development programs, and an MBA to his oversight of programs featuring DARPA’s signature audacity. One program that Xander inherited from a previous program manager proved it was possible to fly and navigate massive aircraft in the stratosphere as potential supplements to satellites by exploiting differing wind conditions at differing altitudes. Test flights of the huge balloons at the center of the program triggered reports of UFOs. Another one of his programs took steps toward aircraft capable of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL), like a helicopter or drone, but at unprecedented speeds of hundreds of miles per hour. No X-plane prototype came out of that effort, but pathways forward and dead-ends to avoid did. Xander’s current primary project, known as the Control of Revolutionary Aircraft with Novel Effectors (CRANE) program, is investigating ways of controlling how air flows over aircraft surfaces to open engineering pathways toward planes that can be steered without the need for moveable surfaces. One more thing: Xander recently got the green light for a small initiative to pursue, in his words, “battlefield personal mobility,” which could lead to small, quiet paragliders or helicopters as well as a type of aeronautic equipment long emblematic of the future: jet packs. Says Xander, “there’s some technology that’s now emerging that might make that more practical.” https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/podcast

Episode 46 posting date: June 30, 2021

Episode 45: Ushering Microelectronics into Its Next Era

In this episode of the Voices form DARPA podcast, listeners get a status report on DARPA’s ambitious and expansive Electronics Resurgence Initiative (ERI) and learn about the many touchpoints that DARPA and the microelectronics sector have shared over the past half-century. Also in the podcast is a preview of a follow-on effort, ERI 2.0, which is designed to accelerate the transition of foundational research and development into prototyping, manufacturing, and delivery of next-generation microelectronics technologies.

Episode 45 posting date: June 8, 2021

Episode 44: Sounds of Innovation 3

“Go into a science or engineering laboratory. Close your eyes. And listen,” suggests the host of Sounds of Innovation, an intermittent feature of the agency’s Voices from DARPA podcast. Or you could just check out the newly posted installment of the feature and eavesdrop on some of the soundscapes of DARPA-supported research.

Rather than hearing the voices and stories of program managers, which is normally what you get in a Voices from DARPA podcast, in each Sounds of Innovation episode, you hear some of the sonic details of research and development … and learn just a bit about the new technological capabilities those sounds could lead to.

See if you can guess how the sounds were produced before the host reveals their origins. One hint for the first set of soundscapes is that they have nothing to do with big drops of rain hitting a tin roof. Here’s a lead regarding the second soundscape: you might want to be sitting when the host reveals the extreme-tech that produced the sound. For the third set of sounds, let’s just say that if you were a mosquito – and we are not saying you are – the sounds definitely would not be music to your ears.

Episode 44 posting date: May 24, 2021

Episode 43: The Sky Master

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Scott Wierzbanowski, a program manager since 2016 in the agency’s Tactical Technology Office, recounts how he came of age in a family of test pilots and then embraced the mission of fostering technologies for amplifying the capabilities of airmen, their aircraft, and other defense assets in the sky. Recorded in March 2021, a month before the end of his tour of duty at DARPA, Wierzbanowski, a retired Air Force test pilot, opens windows in the podcast on a lofty and ambitious portfolio of programs that reach even to space. One program delivered hard-won lessons on what it will take to engineer and build an unmanned reusable vehicle that can ferry payloads to low earth orbit with the ease and agility of an aircraft. Another program furthered the ability of human pilots to seamlessly team with automated and robotic systems to achieve complex mission needs with more dexterity than could either team member alone. Two of Wierzbanowski’s programs have been taking steps toward aerial capabilities in which a host aircraft and its crew work, in one case, with multiple sensor-bearing, unmanned, aerial scouts that depart from and return to the mother ship, and in another case, with unmanned weapons-bearing aerial vehicles that can project force in forward positions while enabling expensive and exquisite defense aircraft and their crews to remain out of harm’s way. When he sums up his vision, Wierzbanowski says it’s all about “distributed air operations” in which “UAVs are the ones going into high threat areas and manned aircraft are the ones that are overseeing the complicated air battle.”

Episode 43 posting date: April 26, 2021

Episode 42: The Infrared Visionary

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Whitney Mason, a program manager since 2017 in the agency’s Microsystems Technology Office, explains how she became smitten with the science and technology of imaging. Even as a child, Mason was curious about the world, wondering about everything, she says, from why the sky is blue to what makes concrete hard. But what ended up inspiring her most and cementing in her professional trajectory was the fantastic ways that animals see, including the ability to see in the night using infrared light. “A soldier needs to see at night,” Mason says. “Or see through dust. Or find homemade explosives. Or find things really far away. Or track things.” That list of warfighters’ sensory needs explains a lot about the bold portfolio of projects Mason oversees at DARPA. She is out to provide warfighters with some of the smartest, most discerning, most versatile imaging sensors ever devised. As she explains in the podcast, this will require designing into the sensors brain-like functions of identifying what really requires attention in a complex scene of mostly benign features, preprocessing huge amounts of data the ways eyes do before sending information brainward via the optic nerves, and purging raw sensor data of extraneous portions that can be confusing to both people and computers. One of her programs, which aims to shrink otherwise unwieldly infrared imaging systems into much smaller and lighter packages, challenges materials researchers with a task equivalent to reforming a brittle ceramic dinner plate into the shape of cup. That’s just a taste of the tough problems her projects' research teams are working on. Challenging as her job might be, Mason seems to be just where she wants to be. “I have had very fun jobs,” Mason says, “but this is the funnest.”

Episode 42 posting date: April 5, 2021

Episode 41: The AI Tutor

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Bruce Draper, a program manager since 2019 in the agency’s Information Innovation Office, explains how his fascination with the ways people reason, think, and believe what they believe steered him into a lifelong embrace of computer science and artificial intelligence (AI) research. At DARPA, Draper—who says he welcomes working at a place where an academic scientist like himself can influence the direction of entire fields of research—oversees a portfolio of programs that collectively are about making artificial intelligence learn faster, less prone to mistakes and flawed inferences, and less vulnerable to misuse and deception. One of his programs aims to imbue computers with nonverbal communication abilities so that AIs collaborating with people can integrate a human being’s facial and gestural cues with written and oral ones. Another program seeks to make machine-learning algorithms into quicker studies that require simpler data sets to learn how to identify objects, actions, and other categories of phenomena. Two of Draper’s programs fall into the category of “adversarial AI,” in which, for example, those with ill intent might try to deceive an AI with “poisoned data” that could lead to inappropriate inferences and actions. Yet another program, a new one, aims to develop AIs that can serve as competent guides for people in the midst of tasks, say, fixing the brakes on a military aircraft or preparing tiramisu for a dinner party. “It’s sort of the do-it-yourself revolution on steroids,” says Draper. AI holds exciting possibilities, he adds, but it will take close attention to privacy concerns, built-in biases, and other hidden perils for AI to become the technology we want it to be for us all.

Episode 41 posting date: March 11, 2021

Episode 40: Sounds of Innovation 2

Go into a science or engineering laboratory. Close your eyes. And listen.

In a biotechnology lab, you might hear the squelch of motors of an automated sample-handling system. In a soft-robotics test facility, you might hear the pneumatic sounds of air filling and evacuating from artificial muscles. In a genomics center, you might hear the monotone hum of cooling fans from a bank of gene-sequencing machines. In each setting, you can hear a sonic fingerprint of what goes on there.

Welcome to Sounds of Innovation, an intermittent feature of our Voices from DARPA podcast. Rather than hearing the voices of program managers, which is normally what you get in a Voices from DARPA podcast, in each Sounds of Innovation episode, you will hear some of the soundscapes of research and development … and learn just a little bit about the world-changing capabilities those sounds could lead to. See if you can guess how the sounds were produced before our podcast host reveals their origin.

Episode 40 posting date: March 1, 2021

Episode 39: The What-if Chemist

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Seth Cohen, a program manager since 2019 in the agency’s Biological Technologies Office, takes listeners on a scientific journey that began with childhood fossil-hunting forays with his biology-teacher dad and is unfolding now in his oversight of three ambitious programs that center on some of humanity’s most pressing needs. Two of these take on the relentlessly evolving public-health threats that viral and bacterial pathogens pose. Another program is immersed in the challenge of the increasing scarcity of potable water. If Seth has it his way, these programs will deliver 1) a new strategy for fighting viral infections; 2) a powerful anti-bacterial framework that will recruit our bodies’ home-made, protective molecular means to stave off the emerging public-health catastrophe of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections; and 3) technologies for extracting water from the atmosphere in regions where water is scarce. Seth also shares his government-service experiences by which he has come to know the value of science policy in moving society toward badly-needed solutions. He finishes his story with a pitch to graduate students and others in the innovation ecosystems to embrace exciting and consequential roles in the government R&D landscape that they might not know about, including ones at DARPA. Says Seth in support of that advice, “DARPA has been…one of the best places I could ever imagine working.” When he is not uncovering new marvels of cellular chemistry or opening pathways to new technologies, Seth, a fan and amateur historian of muscle cars, just might be seen tooling around in his 1963 Corvette Stingray convertible.

Episode 39 posting date: February 2, 2021

Episode 38: The Oceanic Defender

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, John Waterston, a program manager since 2017 in the agency’s Strategic Technology Office, lets listeners in on his oceanic immersions both as a naval officer and a technology developer. Now a commander in the U.S. Naval Reserves, John offers snapshots of living, working, and serving on our nation’s nuclear submarines before describing his current work at DARPA to develop technologies to better understand, monitor, and navigate the planet’s most prevalent environment—the oceans. In one of his ambitious programs, John seeks to deliver what has been a coveted but elusive capability—the equivalent of GPS that operates even in the deep ocean. In a related program, John explains how very low-frequency (VLF) electromagnetic signals from lightning that occurs relentlessly around the world can become a key to a back-up positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) system in case our must-have GPS goes down. And in perhaps his most audacious program, the Ocean of Things, he is assembling what amounts to an ocean-scale nervous systems comprising tens of thousands of floating sensors, opening pathways to an unprecedentedly fine-grained understanding of what is happening in vast ocean environments. Says John about the ocean, “it’s so immense, covering 70% of the Earth’s surface, yet even with all of the ships, all of the aircraft, all of the satellites, and all of the existing sensors, we are severely undersampling this environment.” He has made it his mission to fill in that data shortfall, which he says could significantly improve weather forecasting for the benefit of both military and civilian sectors.

Episode 38 posting date: January 2, 2021

Episode 37: Sounds of Innovation 1

Welcome to Sounds of Innovation, a new intermittent feature of our Voices from DARPA podcast. Rather than hearing the voices of program managers, which is normally what you get in a Voices from DARPA podcast, in each Sounds of Innovation episode, you will hear some of the soundscapes of research and development…and learn just a little bit about the world-changing capabilities those sounds could lead to.

Episode 37 posting date: December 21, 2020

Episode 36: The Hypersonic Materialist

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, William (Bill) Carter, a program manager since 2018 in the agency’s Defense Sciences Office, recounts his scientific journey. It began with childhood wonder amidst star-blazoned New Mexico skies and high-school summer jobs at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and has taken him now, literally, to leading edges of materials science and engineering. His portfolio of programs at DARPA aims to deliver materials that increase the practical range of hypersonic vehicles by breaking the “heat barrier,” that is, by taming the extreme heat flows on surfaces of hypersonic weapons and vehicles; thermoelectric materials and systems for quiet, portable power generation in contested areas; and nanoscale-engineered materials suitable for such jobs as replacing tendons and printing electronics as easily as laser-printing a photograph. Says Carter, “I have absolutely unbounded optimism about the potential for science to solve today’s most important problems and I think materials science can contribute.”

Episode 36 posting date: December 1, 2021

Episode 35: Maxwell’s Disciple

In this new episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Tom Rondeau, a program manager since 2016 — first in the agency’s Microsystems Technology Office before switching over this year to the Strategic Technology Office — takes listeners on a kaleidoscopic tour of his efforts to usher wireless technology into a new era. Anchored in an emerging technology arena known as software-defined radio (SDR), his programs dive deeply into the pathbreaking hardware, software, computational techniques, power efficiencies, and innovation communities that it will take to do more with the electromagnetic spectrum than ever before. Think of every cellphone call ever made, of satellite communication, and now of billions of devices communicating wirelessly via apps and the internet. And now think beyond all of that. The tattoos of Maxwell’s Equations — which famously capture the behavior of electromagnetic waves as discerned by the 19th century physicist James Clerk Maxwell — on Tom’s forearms reveal just how devoted he is to his technology-development mission. “I look down at those every day and have a moment of awe about what we have been able to do,” he tells listeners. And then he has another moment of awe as he imagines how much more he might be able to pull off as a DARPA program manager.

Episode 35 posting date: November 5, 2020

Episode 34: The Orbital Optician

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Stacie Williams, a program manager since 2019 in the agency’s Tactical Technology Office, reveals how a lifelong love of optical and photonic phenomena, beginning with fireflies during her childhood, is now unfolding in her stewardship of ambitious light-and-optics-centric programs at DARPA. One of these, the Deformable Mirror (DeMi) program, recently reached a milestone with the placement from the International Space Station of a dime-sized deformable mirror on a loaf-sized CubeSat platform. The goal of DeMi is to deliver cheaper, lighter, smaller telescope mirrors—in the form of a microelectromechanical system (MEMS)—that could open unprecedented options for space-based ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) technology that, in Stacie’s words, “helps us understand what’s going on with a space eyeview.” In another optics-tech effort under Stacie’s wing, researchers are learning how to design so-called metamaterials—with engineered microstructures that manipulate electromagnetic wavelengths—that also could greatly simplify, lighten, and cheapen far more massive, complex, and expensive conventional telescopes. In the podcast, Stacie also recounts her work beyond technology as a champion of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education for economically disadvantaged communities.

Episode 34 posting date: October 16, 2020

Episode 33: The Verification Virtuoso

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Matt Turek, a program manager since 2018 in the agency’s Information Innovation Office, discusses his portfolio of artificial intelligence (AI) programs that could not be more timely. Two of these programs map onto this harrowing moment in history where one of the most precious assets we can have as a society — trust in media and in various channels and modes of communications — is evaporating. Another program gets at a different kind of crucial trust: human trust in the AI tools that are becoming embedded and influential in our everyday lives and in government responsibilities including national security and defense. And in yet another program, Turek is asking the research talent out there to build one of the most powerful components of human intelligence into artificial intelligence: common sense. Turek says he hopes to encourage AI researchers to, in his words, “work together in ways that aren’t currently happening or maybe they didn’t envision happening.”

Episode 33 posting date: September 23, 2021

Episode 32: The Opportunity Hunter

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Air Force Lt. Col. C. David Lewis, a program manager since 2018 in the agency’s Defense Sciences Office, takes listeners on a tour of the amazingly diverse portfolio of programs he oversees. The foci of these range from the deep math underlying optimization challenges, such as planning complex routes and managing supply chains, to using untapped signals in the atmosphere as indicators of both natural and human activities on the planet’s surface. He also shares a chronicle of his navigation, as a Black person, through the individual and systemic racism that confronted him as he pursued his love of science (which his sixth-grade teacher and key educational ally recognized) and later his ambition to become a fighter pilot (and even an astronaut), a physicist, and then to land what he calls his “dream job” as a DARPA program manager. Amidst the vexing challenges to fully open educational and professional opportunities to all Americans, David has a forward-looking message for listeners. “We are going to evolve,” he says. “It’s important for all Americans now to think about what they want the future to look like.”

Episode 32 posting date: September 2, 2020

Episode 31: Science 2.0

In this thematic episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, three program managers discuss the possibility that emerging technologies in the arena of artificial intelligence (AI) are converging toward an “artificial science” toolset that could open an era we might designate as Science 2.0. The prospect of AI scientists making Nobel-prize-caliber discoveries is not around the corner, but it is a distinct possibility for the future, suggests program manager Jiangying Zhou of the agency’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO). On the way toward that ideal, adds program manager Joshua Elliott of the Information Innovation Office (I2O), we are likely to rely on scientifically-minded AI tools to pump up the efficiency of scientific discovery and to tap into the vast and growing reservoirs of data, which biological minds might not be as suited to make sense of as AI ones. For Bartlett Russell, also of DSO, perhaps the most important advance during the evolution toward a Science 2.0 era will reside in the use of AI tools that enable more people than ever to embrace the scientific enterprise. The more minds doing science, she says, the more discovery we can expect.

Episode 31 posting date: August 17, 2020

Episode 30: The Sensor Sorcerer

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Dr. John Burke, a program manager since 2017 in the agency’s Microsystems Technology Office (MTO), goes deep, quantum-mechanics deep. The miniaturized, affordable, and ultrastable atomic clocks he hopes to make possible would kick in if the GPS system were to go down due to natural or adversarial actions. Such clocks could keep the military machine viable while also preserving or even enhancing the operation of civilian must-haves ranging from financial transactions to ridesharing (think Uber and Lyft). Burke has teams of researchers pursuing magnificently sensitive magnetometers for detecting objects, materials, and activities otherwise hidden underground, underwater, or behind bone. Among these sensors’ potential applications is real-time, in-field diagnostics and monitoring of concussions, whether in battlefield or sports field settings. These and other sensing capabilities Burke is fostering are based largely on the quantum-mechanical ways that atoms behave (e.g., the invariant nuclear oscillations that serve at the ticks of atomic clocks) or respond to signals in the world (e.g., faint magnetic fields from brains or buried ordnance). The overall goal of this quantum-mechanical finessing, Burke says, is to “peer around the curtain to see more and more of everything around us.”

Episode 30 posting date: July 7, 2020

Episode 29: The Light and Matter Maestro

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Dr. Michael Fiddy, a program manager since 2016 in the agency’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO), takes listeners on a whirlwind tour of his programs. They all share a common thread, which stems from Fiddy’s lifelong interest in how light — electromagnetic (EM) energy, more generally — interacts with matter. At DARPA, he has expressed that interest by challenging researchers to investigate whether biological cells interact with one another via EM signals; how it might be possible to use low-frequency EM radiation to see through just about anything (including metal); and how precisely engineered surfaces might tap into quantum mechanical phenomena (Casimir forces) in the vacuum of space in a quest for fuel-less propulsion technology. As Fiddy points out in the podcast, “We have been doing science for a few hundred years and there still is an awful lot that we don’t know.”

Episode 29 posting date: June 23, 2020

Episode 28: Swarm Commander

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Dr. Timothy Chung, a program manager since 2016 in the agency’s Tactical Technology Office, delves into his robotics and autonomous technology programs – the Subterranean (SubT) Challenge and OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET). From robot soccer to live-fly experimentation programs involving dozens of unmanned aircraft systems (UASs), he explains how he aims to assist humans heading into unknown environments via advances in collaborative autonomy and robotics. The SubT Challenge focuses on the underground – human-made tunnels, the urban underground, and natural cave networks. Teams from around the world vie for prizes via Systems (physical) and Virtual competitions, with air and ground platforms attempting to rapidly map, navigate, and search the subterranean domain. The OFFSET program envisions small-unit infantry forces seamlessly teaming with swarms of even hundreds of (UASs) and/or small unmanned ground systems. The program combines emerging technologies in swarm autonomy and human-swarm teaming. Chung shares how he learned to see things not as impossible, but rather un-possible because, “it's not that it can't be done. It just hasn't been done yet.”

Episode 28 posting date: June 11, 2020

Episode 27: Detecting Threats with Time to Act

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Mark Wrobel, a program manager since 2019 in the agency’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO), chronicles progress in the SIGMA+ program and its potential near-term relevance to monitoring the environment for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The now-completed predecessor program, SIGMA, delivered a sensor and analysis system for detecting imminent nuclear and radiological threats in complex settings like cities, stadiums, and travel hubs. That system has been transitioning into deployments. The charge of the SIGMA+ program is to expand the threat-detection system’s abilities to include an extensive range of chemical, explosive, and biological agents. To avoid costly false alarms and potentially lethal false negatives (missed detections), the technology must be able to reliably discern actual threats from the myriad benign nuclear, radiological, chemical and biological signals that typically are present in any given location. As Wrobel puts it, “We are trying to move detection to the left of boom.”

Episode 27 posting date: May 21, 2020

Episode 26: The Eclectic Biotechnician

In this episode of our Voices from DARPA podcast, Eric Van Gieson, a program manager since 2017 in the agency’s Biological Technologies Office (BTO), recounts how a boyhood fascination with DARPA ultimately led to his current role overseeing a portfolio of envelope-pushing programs. These include a program that seeks new diagnostic tools for perhaps the earliest-possible detection of exposure to pathogens, including SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19; an effort to identify and leverage the biomolecular bases underlying optimal performance in such roles as piloting aircraft or participating in special forces missions; research toward new personal-protection technologies that combine advanced featherweight fabrics with designed, bio-based agents applied directly to the body where they can neutralize injurious chemical and biological agents before they can do damage; and a bold biomedical strategy that stands a chance of replacing some medicine-based treatments (for conditions ranging from irritable bowel syndrome to post-traumatic stress disorder) with treatments based on the electrical stimulation of the peripheral nervous system, specifically the far-reaching vagus nerve.

Episode 26 posting date: May 14, 2020

Episode 25: New Molecular Tactics for Pandemic Times

In this episode of our Voices from DARPA podcast, we turn again to Dr. Anne Fischer, a program manager since 2017 in the agency’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO), this time to learn how she has been swerving two of her programs in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. One of those programs, Accelerating Molecular Discovery (AMD), centers on developing machine-learning and other computational techniques to dramatically streamline the discovery of molecules with properties relevant to the Department of Defense. Think here of chemical-warfare simulants for research, coatings that protect assets and personnel, specialty fuels, and medicines to counter emerging threats. With an eye on that last one, Dr. Fischer has been swerving some AMD work into an urgent hunt for molecules with previously unrecognized antibiotic properties. One specific target is new treatments for secondary bacterial lung infections in patients with COVID-19. The other program Dr. Fischer is swerving into the COVID-19 response is Make-It. The program’s envisioned deliverables for the DoD include tabletop chemical-synthesis systems that can produce chemicals when and where they are needed. Think here of the ability to quickly synthesize pharmaceuticals in a battlefield setting. Think here also of a chemical-synthesis channel independent of globalized supply chains that can become compromised. Now, this capability for on-demand synthesis of chemical products, including antivirals and reagents for diagnostic tests, is revealing Make-It technology as a promising component of our ability to respond to emergencies such as outbreaks of infectious diseases.

For the previous discussion with Dr. Fischer about her background, interests, and longer-term goals for the programs she manages, please also listen to Episode 22, titled The Chemquistador.

Episode 25 posting date: April 22, 2020

Episode 24: Preventing Pandemics

We find ourselves in pandemic times. The global population is under siege by an infectious virus new to humankind. It’s called Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2. It’s the causative agent of the pandemic disease designated COVID-19. This viral adversary knows no politics. It recognizes no national boundaries. It is unconcerned with anyone’s identity. All 7.8 billion of us are the same to the virus: we are all hosts suitable to commandeer to make copies of itself. DARPA has long recognized how devastating pandemic diseases like COVID-19 could be and the Agency embraced the attitude that it could do something about the threat of pandemics. In recent years, it has been creating and supporting communities of innovators who are doing the science and applying the lessons they are learning to create a technology platform that stands a chance of this: preventing any outbreak of infectious disease—anywhere and anytime—from growing into a global conflagration like the one we are experiencing right now. In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, join a team of program managers in the Agency’s Biological Technology Office as they explain how they are striving to develop a multi-pronged technologies platform that has the potential to render COVID-19 humanity’s last pandemic.

Episode 24 posting date: March 30, 2020

Episode 23: Joe Spectrum

In this episode of our Voices from DARPA podcast, Joseph Evans, a program manager since 2015 in the agency's Strategic Technology Office (STO), shares with listeners how his embrace of data, communications technologies, and the electromagnetic spectrum—the invisible place where radio, radar, and other radio frequency (RF) signals live and propagate—has led to the portfolio of programs that he now oversees. This portfolio includes a program that essentially renders visible the frenetic RF activity that is going on in the space we occupy. Another program includes the challenge of converting radar systems into communications channels. In yet another, Joe is striving to find better ways of leveraging the ever-growing reservoir of commercial and open-source satellite imagery to improve warfighters’ abilities to detect, monitor, and track what is going on, that is, to improve their situational awareness. Joe also flies planes, skippers boats, skies, runs, and sometimes straps on a guitar to send acoustic waves into the same space hosting all of those electromagnetic waves that he cares so much about.

Episode 23 posting date: October 4, 2018

Episode 22: The Chemquistador

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Anne Fischer, a program manager since 2017 in the agency’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO), recounts how she has been applying a chemist’s mindset, which began taking hold in her as a child when her parents handed her a chemistry set, in an amazing portfolio of extreme-chemistry projects at DARPA. In one of them, she is overseeing research that could pump up the creativity and productivity of chemists by way of artificial intelligence that plans and optimizes molecule-making procedures and with automated equipment that synthesizes the actual molecules. In another of her projects, Fischer has her sights on molecule-based computing that could open the way to radically new and powerful ways to process information and store data. In yet another program, she is helping to develop one of the most unusual pickup trucks ever: it will have an engine that burns and destroys chemical warfare agents, producing power in the process. There’s plenty more to Fischer’s expansive molecular vision on the world and national defense.

Episode 22 posting date: August 8, 2018

Episode 21: Mr. Thousand Satellites

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Paul “Rusty” Thomas, a program manager since 2017 in the Agency’s Tactical Technology Office (TTO), chronicles how his several-decade career within the commercial space industry has taught him a thing or two about designing, manufacturing, launching, and operating more than 130 civilian and government satellites. At DARPA, he is bringing that background to bear on one of the Agency’s more ambitious space-technology projects, Blackjack, which upon completion could encompass a mesh-like network of thousands of small and inexpensive satellites for delivering global, all-the-time sensing, communications, and other national-security services. With boots-on-the-ground experience in Afghanistan, a pilot’s license, and a personal altitude of 6’8”, Rusty projects a larger-than-life persona, illuminated by an infectious sense of mission to innovate the way toward future-generation space technology.

Episode 21 posting date: June 18, 2018

Episode 20: The Genomineer

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Renee Wegrzyn, a program manager since 2016 in the Agency’s Biological Technologies Office (BTO), recounts the origins of her current interests in synthetic biology and genomics, both of them powerful frameworks for engineering biological systems for technological ends. Still wielding influence are her childhood days amidst Florida’s abundant wildlife, a science-hooked sister, and a high school field trip in which Renee encountered fossil mastodon teeth. Her subsequent experience in the biotechnology industry got her hooked on the versatile power of combining biology and engineering in ways that can produce new medical technologies, materials, and other products. Along the way, Wegrzyn recounts what for her was a “Sputnik moment” in biology, based on the emergence of the celebrity gene-editing toolset known for short as CRISPR, which has underwritten an immensely powerful genetic and genomic engineering framework. Under Renee’s DARPA programs, Living Foundries and Safe Genes, researchers are innovating new means of manipulating and leveraging biology’s ways of eliciting traits in organisms and of making molecules and materials while also developing means for keeping those same bioengineering capabilities in check to hedge against their misuse or unintended consequences.

Episode 20 posting date: April 25, 2018

Episode 19: The AI Intermediary

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, David Gunning chronicles his three tours of duty as a DARPA program manager (PM), including his latest tour with the Agency’s Information Innovation Office. Throughout his DARPA service, David has combined his training and interests in computer science and psychology in ways that have extended the boundaries of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, both for warfighters and for the general public. During his first tour as a PM in the 90’s, he managed a portfolio of AI projects including the Command Post of the Future (CPoF) program, which delivered technology that was later adopted by the US Army as its Command and Control system for use in Iraq and Afghanistan. During his previous tour, from 2003-2008, David managed the Personalized Assistant that Learns (PAL) program that later led to Siri, perhaps the most famous virtual personal assistant. Now, in his third tour, he is aiming for a new generation of artificial intelligences that earn the confidence of their human users by being able to explain the decisions and actions that emerge from their internal computation. David is delighted that as he works to expand the frontiers of AI, he also will have the privilege of participating in the emergence of a more familiar variety of intelligence in his first grandson, who lives nearby.

Episode 19 posting date: April 9, 2018

Episode 18: The Disease Slayer

In this episode of Voices from DARPA, COL Matthew Hepburn, a program manager since 2013 with the Agency’s Biological Technologies Office (BTO), explains how his urgent ambition to develop ways and means of disarming current and emerging infectious diseases—think here of Ebola, influenza, and Chikungunya—has led to a portfolio of go-for-the-gold programs that ultimately could reduce human suffering by an immeasurable degree. A biomedical engineer, physician, and global disease fighter by training and experience, Matt has known since he was a child that taking care of people was going to be his mission and he says DARPA is a place where he might be able to carry out that childhood dream to an extreme that would not be possible elsewhere.

Episode 18 posting date: February 20, 2018

Episode 17: Guardian of the Chips

In this episode of Voices from DARPA, electrical engineer Kerry Bernstein, a program manager since 2012 with the Agency’s Microsystems Technology Office (MTO), chronicles how his decades of experience in the trenches of the microelectronics manufacturing world drives what he does at DARPA. He is all about ensuring the reliability and integrity of the microelectronic chips the country needs and uses in just about every military and civilian setting you can think of. With electronics manufacturing distributed over so many countries and manufacturing facilities now, the threat of tampering, counterfeiting, and other nefarious actions has become more complex than ever. For his part, Bernstein has been shepherding the development of some of the highest technology there is—in tiny glitter-sized packages no less—to keep our electronics supply chain safe and sound.

Episode 17 posting date: February 2, 2018

Episode 16: The Spinmaster

In this episode of Voices from DARPA, physicist Rosa Alejandra “Ale” Lukaszew, a program manager who is just finishing her first year with the Agency’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO), recounts how her interest in quantum phenomena took root at the age of 10 when already she could write down the equations of uncertainty. Now, at DARPA, she is channeling what became a lifelong fascination with fundamental physics into opening new pathways toward understanding and harnessing electronic ensembles and the correlated ways these diminutive entities “spin” and otherwise behave in various material settings. In her role as a program manager, Ale would like to make it possible for the researchers working on her DARPA programs to forge next-generation paradigms in electronics for applications in memory, logic, energy conversion devices, and sensors.

Episode 16 posting date: January 5, 2018

Episode 15: The DARPAnthropologist

In this episode of Voices from DARPA, sociocultural anthropologist Adam Russell, a program manager with the Agency’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO), discusses his vision for a range of technologies that can help usher in a next-generation social science. At the crux of this future view are novel experimental designs, practices, and tools to tackle research challenges that traditionally have limited the value of social science for national security. Russell believes these advances may help yield scientific results that are far more reliable, validated, predictive, and otherwise valuable for making decisions and basing actions than has been the case to date. Among the emerging and morphing issues that affect national security, and for which Russell says new approaches in social sciences might help, is the way modern environments can impact social identities and the choices people and groups make based on those identities. Contributing to his own self identifications, and to his cognitive style as a scientist, are his experiences as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University and a national-level rugby player.

Episode 15 posting date: November 27, 2017

Episode 14: The Mix-and-Matcher

In this episode of Voices from DARPA, Jim Galambos, a program manager with the Agency’s Strategic Technology Office (STO), talks about the opportunities and challenges of rethinking military platforms like submarines and aircraft as systems of systems, much as a human body can be thought of as a system of circulatory, neurological, sensory, musculoskeletal, and other subsystems. The system-of-systems paradigm, Galambos says, is a pathway toward military assets that can be more versatile, agile, evolvable, tailorable, survivable, and otherwise capable than previous generations of platforms. He also discusses the value that informative failure can have for achieving ambitious successes.

Episode 14 posting date: November 8, 2017

Episode 13: The Squad Transformer

In this episode of Voices from DARPA, Maj. Christopher Orlowski, a program manager with extensive military experience and now at the end of his tenure of the Agency’s Tactical Technology Office (TTO), draws a line from his research programs in mechanized and robotic undersuits, vehicles, and human-machine systems, which are driven by the goal of empowering warfighters on the ground in unprecedented ways, all of the way back to the G. I. Joe cartoons he watched as a kid.

Episode 13 posting date: October 12, 2017

Episode 12: The Neobiologist

In this episode of Voices from DARPA, synthetic biologist and program manager Justin Gallivan of the Agency’s Biological Technologies Office (BTO) shares his vision of leveraging biology’s astonishing, evolution-honed abilities for making molecules and materials—think here of protein and wood—into powerful new technologies that fall into the emerging category of synthetic biology. Among the potential payoffs he discusses are growing military installations from what could be thought of as seeds and pre-toughening warfighters’ guts for the microbial challenges they face in faraway missions. Be warned: blue poop and interplanetary construction come up in this engaging discussion.

Episode 12 posting date: August 15, 2017

Episode 11: The Thin-Air Specialist

In this episode of Voices from DARPA, get inside the full-spectrum engineering head of Dr. Troy Olsson, a program manager since 2014 in the Agency’s Microsystems Technology Office (MTO). Listen in as Olsson describes progress toward vanishing materials that can keep sensitive electronic components out of adversaries’ hands; unmanned air vehicles that can deliver provisions and then just disappear; massive miniaturization of low-frequency antennas for underwater radio communication; and stand-alone sensors that require almost no power at all yet for years remain vigilant to sounds, radio signals, and other environmental signals of interest to warfighters. And then there’s those really far-out technologies that Olsson hopes to enjoy one day.

Episode 11 posting date: July 13, 2017

Episode 10: The Social Simulator

In this episode of Voices from DARPA, get to know Dr. Jonathan Pfautz, a program manager since 2015 in the DARPA's Information Innovation Office (I2O), where he epitomizes the Agency’s deliberate blindness to traditional disciplinary boundaries. With a background in computer engineering and electrical engineering, as well as in the cognitive and behavioral sciences, Pfautz is seeking to develop new techniques for massive-scale simulations of social behavior, including information sharing, as it takes form and evolves within the context of today’s astoundingly powerful information technologies and online social networking infrastructures. Pfautz also is concerned about the evolution of human-machine etiquette. And listen in on how he and his wife are so profoundly devoted to the scientific enterprise that they named their daughters after two giants in the history of science.

Episode 10 posting date: June 21, 2017

Episode 9: The Datamancer

Mr. Wade Shen of the Agency’s Information Innovation Office has made it his mission to improve how human beings and their computers put their respective heads and cognitive frameworks together to yield deep insight into how the world works and how information affects the way people think and act. Listen in on how Shen is enacting that mission the DARPA programs that he oversees, among them the Data Driven Discovery of Models (D3M) program, the Quantitative Crisis Response (QCR) program, and the Memex program, which is devoted to advancing search capabilities far beyond the current state of the art. Shen also muses about what it would take to build a universal translator that would enable all 7.4 billion people on the planet to overcome language barriers and talk with one another.

Episode 9 posting date: May 1, 2017

Episode 8: The Uncertainty Wrangler

Dr. Fariba Fahroo of the Agency’s Defense Sciences Office discusses just how pivotal mathematics can be for, in her words, “keeping our models honest.” By characterizing the uncertainties inherent in the computer models and algorithms we use to better understand complex phenomena, such as the flow of air over aircraft surfaces and through high-performance engines, as well as to design, engineer, and control today’s ever more complicated civilian and military systems, Fahroo aims to develop modeling frameworks by which these systems can be built and deployed with more confidence and insight than ever into their strengths and vulnerabilities.

Episode 8 posting date: March 14, 2017

Episode 7: The Geolocator

Mr. Lin Haas of the Agency’s Strategic Technology Office shares his expansive view on the current and future roles of Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) technology, whose most famous incarnation is known as the Global Positioning System (GPS). Haas reveals ambitious PNT programs that include efforts to develop an undersea system that provides omnipresent positioning capabilities across ocean basins where GPS signals do not go and to exploit environmental signals, such as the electromagnetic features of lightning, for back-up geolocation service if GPS were to become unavailable.

Episode 7 posting date: February 14, 2017

Episode 6: The Insectophile

Dr. Blake Bextine of the Agency’s Biological Technologies Office talks about his virus- and insect-mediated vision for protecting food crops from natural and human-wrought threats, including drought and biological warfare. With his Insect Allies program, Bextine aims to increase food security by recruiting insects to deliver viruses, which have been modified to bear protective genes, into plants where those virus-carried genes could save the plants from the threats they face. He also shares ideas about a future with more insects on the menu to feed the many more mouths that likely will be on the planet.

Episode 6 posting date: January 12, 2017

Episode 5: The Mind Mixer

Dr. Paul Cohen of the Agency’s Information Innovation Office talks about his efforts to develop better and more seamless ways for human intelligence and machine intelligence to combine their respective strengths into a hybrid and collaborative intelligence that can do more than either of its components.

Episode 5 posting date: December 19, 2016

Episode 4: The Terahertzian

Dr. Dev Palmer recounts how he turned an early interest in the vacuum tubes of his guitar amplifiers into a career as an electrical engineer, including his present role as a program manager in DARPA’s Microsystems Technology Office. His mission? To push electronic and electromagnetic technology along new frontiers that could lead to more capable radar, electronic warfare, and communications systems, and even to entirely new technologies.

Episode 4 posting date: December 1, 2016

Episode 3: The Semiconductor Whisperer

Dr. Dan Green, a program manager in DARPA’s Microsystems Technology Office, discusses the Agency’s work to develop semiconductor materials, among them gallium arsenide and now gallium nitride, that open pathways to both military and civilian technology in categories spanning from electronic warfare to radar to communications.

Episode 3 posting date: October 31, 2016

Episode 2: Space Sentinel

Dr. Lindsay Millard, a program manager in DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office, discusses the Agency’s Space Surveillance Telescope (SST) program, a key component in the nation’s ability to detect and track space debris and other objects to determine if they will collide with orbiting satellites or impact the Earth.

Episode 2 posting date: October 12, 2016

Episode 1: Molecule Man

Dr. Tyler McQuade, who joined DARPA in 2013 as a program manager in the Agency’s Defense Sciences Office and became that office’s deputy director in January 2017, reveals his vision of accelerating scientists' ability to discover and make a vast variety of new molecules for medical, military, and many other applications.

Episode 1 posting date: September 23, 2016

DARPA in the news

DARPA’s innovations are shaping the future, from cutting-edge technologies to transformative research that captures global attention. Stay updated with the latest headlines and groundbreaking developments from DARPA. 

Contact