About the Biological Technologies Office
The Biological Technologies Office (BTO) leverages biological properties and processes to revolutionize our ability to protect the nation’s warfighters. BTO harnesses advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to create new opportunities for transformative science across the biological spectrum.
Warfighter health and well-being are critical to mission success. BTO develops diagnostic and assessment systems to identify chemical and biological threats, medical countermeasures, and novel approaches to tactical care and warfighter performance and recovery on and off the battlefield.
BTO also leverages biological processes, technologies, and manufacturing opportunities to create resilient infrastructures and supply chains, protective solutions, and innovative sensors to ensure mission success in any location.
Thrust areas
Data Factories
We develop foundational technologies to simulate and predict biological systems and outcomes (simulation, foundation models, data generation):
- Generate: Vastly improving the quality and quantity of biological data while reducing costs; increasing speed and automation of cloud labs.
- Understand: Exploring the state of the art and enlisting stakeholders to construct necessary research portfolio.
- Simulate: Enabling sequence to function and function to sequence that underpins whole cell modeling and cell-cell interactions.
Combat Casualty Care
We explore solutions for warfighter readiness, health, and recovery, including medical countermeasures, diagnostics, health IT, and medical devices:
- Optimize: Ensuring peak warfighter performance, both physical and cognitive, throughout all phases of a mission.
- Prevent: Protecting warfighters from any threat and advancing capabilities on the battlefield for immediate injury treatment.
- Restore: Creating biotechnological approaches to provide tactical care and restore function to injured warfighters.
Logistics
We develop solutions to support mission success, including, for example, fibers for garments and distributed forward manufacturing:
- Do: Creating solutions that increase operational resilience and logistic security.
- Make: Utilizing the advantages of biology to enable point-of-need production or strengthen existing supply chain for critical commodities.
- Strengthen: Providing technologies that harden operations against disruption and expand capabilities in the field.
Programs
Our research programs are finite in duration, but the revolutionary advancements they drive create lasting change. Learn more about recent and ongoing efforts across our key thrust areas. See all programs
Program Managers
Our program managers are visionary leaders whose experience spans industry, government, and academia. They conceive, plan, and oversee the high-risk R&D efforts for which we are best known. See all people at DARPA
Our approach rewards visionary thinking, ambitious risk-taking, and cross-disciplinary collaboration. See how we do it.
The Heilmeier Catechism
DARPA operates on the principle that generating big rewards requires taking big risks. But how does the Agency determine what risks are worth taking?
End-to-end business process integration framework
Designed to improve cross-functional DoD processes through BPR, business improvement, and interoperability support.
Contracting vehicles
DARPA’s CMO can enter and administer contracts, grants, cooperative agreements, and other transactions to fulfill its research and development mission.