College of Arts & Science faculty, staff and students can meet with Dr. Stephanie Tompkins, Director of the Defense Sciences Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), when Ohio University hosts her on Tuesday, Aug. 9.
DARPA 101
As part of her visit, Tompkins will speak from 9 to 10 a.m. in 103 Stocker on how to interface with DARPA, including a review of how DARPA works with external entities and DARPA research priorities.
- RSVP to research@ohio.edu, subject: DARPA Workshop. RSVP is preferred but not required, but the research office would like to provide Tompkins with a list of attendees and their research interests.
DARPA and New Faculty
From 10 to 10:45 a.m. in 103 Stocker, the discussion continues with new (non-tenured) faculty interested in working with DARPA. This will be a more informal gathering where new faculty will be encouraged to talk with each other and with Tompkins.
Please note, attendees should plan to attend the 9 a.m. general talk, in addition to this discussion.
- RSVP to research@ohio.edu, subject: New Faculty DARPA Workshop.
More Established Faculty
In the late morning and afternoon, there we will be informal group discussions with Tompkins.
- 10:50-11:30 a.m., Physical Sciences and Engineering (TBD). RSVP to research@ohio.edu, subject: Physical Sciences and Engineering: DARPA Workshop
- 11:45 a.m.-12:45 p.m., Avionics (Latitude 39). RSVP to research@ohio.edu, subject: Avionics: DARPA Workshop
- 1-1:30 p.m., Social and Behavioral Sciences (TBD). RSVP to research@ohio.edu, subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences: DARPA Workshop
- 1:45-2:15 p.m., Biological Sciences (TBD). RSVP to research@ohio.edu, subject: Biological Sciences: DARPA Workshop
- 2:30-3 p.m., Open session for those who could not make other times or whose discipline is not in one of the above areas (TBD). RSVP to research@ohio.edu, subject: Open Session: DARPA Workshop
More about DARPA
For more than 50 years, DARPA has held to a singular and enduring mission: to make pivotal investments in breakthrough technologies for national security. DARPA works within an innovation ecosystem that includes academic, corporate and governmental partners, with a constant focus on the nation’s military services, which work with DARPA to create new strategic opportunities and novel tactical options.
DARPA today is focusing its strategic investments in four main areas:
- Rethink Complex Military Systems: To help enable faster development and integration of breakthrough military capabilities in today’s rapidly shifting landscape, DARPA is working to make weapons systems more modular and easily upgraded and improved; assure superiority in the air, maritime, ground, space and cyber domains; improve position, navigation and timing (PNT) without depending on the satellite-based Global Positioning System; and augment defenses against terrorism.
- Master the Information Explosion: DARPA is developing novel approaches to deriving insights from massive datasets, with powerful big-data tools. The agency also is developing technologies to ensure that the data and systems with which critical decisions are made are trustworthy, such as automated cyber defense capabilities and methods to create fundamentally more secure systems. And DARPA is addressing the growing need to ensure privacy at various levels of need without losing the national security value that comes from appropriate access to networked data.
- Harness Biology as Technology: To leverage recent breakthroughs in neuroscience, immunology, genetics and related fields, DARPA in 2014 created its Biological Technologies Office, which has enabled a new level of momentum for the agency’s portfolio of innovative, bio-based programs. DARPA’s work in this area includes programs to accelerate progress in synthetic biology, outpace the spread of infectious diseases, and master new neurotechnologies.
- Expand the Technological Frontier: DARPA’s core work has always involved overcoming seemingly insurmountable physics and engineering barriers and, once showing those daunting problems to be tractable after all, applying new capabilities made possible by these breakthroughs directly to national security needs. Maintaining momentum in this essential specialty, DARPA is working to achieve new capabilities by applying deep mathematics; inventing new chemistries, processes and materials; and harnessing quantum physics.
DARPA Supports the Brain Initiative
This initiative is supported by key contributors to the field of neuroscience. DARPA supports it through a number of programs.
Electrical Prescriptions (ElectRx): The ElectRx program aims to help the human body heal itself through neuromodulation of organ functions using ultraminiaturized devices, approximately the size of individual nerve fibers, which could be delivered through minimally invasive injection.
Hand Proprioception and Touch Interfaces (HAPTIX): The HAPTIX program aims to create fully implantable, modular and reconfigurable neural-interface microsystems that communicate wirelessly with external modules, such as a prosthesis interface link, to deliver naturalistic sensations to amputees.
Neural Engineering System Design (NESD): The NESD program aims to develop an implantable neural interface able to provide unprecedented signal resolution and data-transfer bandwidth between the brain and the digital world.
Neuro Function, Activity, Structure and Technology (Neuro-FAST): The Neuro-FAST program seeks to enable unprecedented visualization and decoding of brain activity to better characterize and mitigate threats to the human brain, as well as facilitate development of brain-in-the loop systems to accelerate and improve functional behaviors. The program has developed CLARITY, a revolutionary tissue-preservation method, and builds off recent discoveries in genetics, optical recordings and brain-computer interfaces.
Reliable Neural-Interface Technology (RE-NET): The RE-NET program seeks to develop the technologies needed to reliably extract information from the nervous system, and to do so at a scale and rate necessary to control complex machines, such as high-performance prosthetic limbs.
Restoring Active Memory (RAM): The RAM program aims to develop and test a wireless, fully implantable neural-interface medical device for human clinical use. The device would facilitate the formation of new memories and retrieval of existing ones in individuals who have lost these capacities as a result of traumatic brain injury or neurological disease.
Restoring Active Memory – Replay (RAM Replay): The RAM Replay program will investigate the role of neural “replay” in the formation and recall of memory, with the goal of helping individuals better remember specific episodic events and learned skills. The program aims to develop novel and rigorous computational methods to help investigators determine not only which brain components matter in memory formation and recall, but also how much they matter.
Revolutionizing Prosthetics: The Revolutionizing Prosthetics program aims to continue increasing functionality of DARPA-developed arm systems to benefit Service members and others who have lost upper limbs. The dexterous hand capabilities developed under the program have already been applied to small robotic systems used to manipulate unexploded ordnance, reducing the risk of limb loss among soldiers.
Systems-Based Neurotechnology for Emerging Therapies (SUBNETS): The SUBNETS program seeks to create implanted, closed-loop diagnostic and therapeutic systems for treating neuropsychological illnesses.
Targeted Neuroplasticity Training (TNT): The TNT program seeks to advance the pace and effectiveness of cognitive skills training through the precise activation of peripheral nerves that can in turn promote and strengthen neuronal connections in the brain. TNT will pursue development of a platform technology to enhance learning of a wide range of cognitive skills, with a goal of reducing the cost and duration of the Defense Department’s extensive training regimen, while improving outcomes.
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