Award Data

Terrorist attacks involving the use of proliferated radiological and special nuclear materials pose a potential threat to U.S. citizens and service members. Early detection of such materials and devices made from them is a critical part of the U.S. strategy to prevent these types of attacks. DARPA’s SIGMA program is developing smaller, lower-cost and more sensitive detectors, along with innovati ...

We propose a novel three-step border monitoring system to detect and describe potential risks for trans-border activities from commercial very high resolution imagery. This system also supports the development of a general level assessment of potential r...

As the human population grows, it is critical to decrease consumption of materials from the planet and its ecosphere. The world adds 70 million people annually. The UN expects the population to grow to over 9 billion 2050. Climate change, soil degradation, unstable water supply all reduce the ability of traditional farming to satisfy food needs. Population increase and scarcity of resources and fo ...

The goal of this project is to understand the impact of challenger strategies on the intent of a target to pursue a gray zone conflict. Understanding the causal impact of a deterrent strategy in one case, and thus its potential efficacy in a future situation, must account for other possible causes that would explain observed deterrent outcomes. We define the intent of the target as the observed be ...

Recent advances in deep sub-threshold analog and digital electronics have created a class of intelligent electronics capable of power consumption levels as low as 10 nanowatts while in the sensor’s asleep-yet-aware phase of Near Zero Power RF and Sensor Operations (N-ZERO). The sub-threshold circuits require power supply voltages typically in the 0.3 to 0.7 V range, yet the voltages of current c ...

The use of big data analytic tools is becoming necessary to unearth information from diverse datasets to satisfy needs across government agencies and commercial entities. Many operationally mature and commercially available tools already address challenges in extracting knowledge from raw data which ultimately informs decisions. A lingering challenge is that many data archives remain isolated (for ...

A significant challenge in extracting event attributes from unstructured text is that events possess a wide array of attributes which affect decision making. In a single document, an author may describe events that have happened (realis), did not happen or could have happened (irrealis), and that may happen in the future. They may describe events which reflect a generic class of occurrences, or a ...

In Phase II of AQUIRE, we will develop a prototype document background generation and management system that can be used by analysts and decision makers to access information gathered from a wide variety of unstructured sources about entities, relations, and complex situations. This system will be able to (1) construct topically organized entity corpora which are automatically supplemented with st ...

Next Century Corporation will develop novel means to acquire data on patterns of exploration of web-based information. For the proposed effort, we will integrate fine-grained logging of activities across different search paths and develop new methods for extracting web content that provides and analyzes the broader context in which such activities take place. In addition, we will develop a robust ...

A staggering number of microbes on Earth (99%) are not culturable using standard laboratory methods. These microbes are called “unculturable”. Microbes not grown and studied in laboratories are uncharacterized and may be a source of useful biological products and molecules. Unculturables have been found in many sample types and environments. Furthermore, characterization of these organisms wil ...