Department of Defense awards $18M to 28 academic competitive research teams

Under the Defense Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (DEPSCoR), the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) this week awarded $18 million to 28 collaborative academic teams, encouraging their research capabilities to enhance U.S. science and engineering.

“DEPSCoR allows us to tap into institutions that have enormous basic research capability – but have been underutilized by DoD – to enhance U.S. science and engineering research capacity both now and in the long term,” said Dr. Bindu Nair, director of DoD’s Basic Research Office. “Since the next scientific breakthrough could come from any corner of our Nation, growing the Department’s ecosystem of creative and insightful researchers is critical to our national security.”

The awards followed two competitions held last year: the DEPSCoR Research Collaboration and DEPSCoR Capacity Building competition. DEPSCoR in general is a capacity-building program meant to strengthen basic research infrastructure at high education organizations in underutilized states and territories. The DEPSCoR Research Collaboration competition was an open field for tenured and tenure-track faculty members from 37 states and territories, all to help introduce these potential researchers to DoD’s unique research challenges and support. DEPSCoR Capacity Building was a competition meant to support the strategic objectives of institutes of higher education in eligible states and territories.

For the Research Collaboration competition, DoD received more than 115 white papers, from which subject matter experts in the military services selected the final 25 collaborative teams. Each team will receive up to $600,000 over a three year period for the pursuit of science and engineering research. Another more than 25 white papers came in for the Capacity Building competition, from which three finalists were selected. Each team will be given up to $1 million over a two year period of performance for capacity-building activities to help achieve basic research excellence in areas relevant to the DoD.