DARPA posts Information Innovation Office BAA

On September 1, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency issued an office-wide broad agency announcement from its Information Innovation Office (HR001117S0048). Abstracts are due no later than 12:00 noon on July 12, 2018, and proposals are due by 12:00 noon on August 31, 2018.

Modern society depends on information and information depends on information systems. Timely, insightful, reliable, and relevant information drives success.  This is not lost on military leaders who well appreciate the critical importance of information for national security.

The Information Innovation Office (I2O) sponsors basic and applied research in three thrust areas to ensure information advantage for the U.S. and its allies:

• The world is moving faster than humans can assimilate, understand, and act. At present we design machines to handle well-defined, high-volume or high-speed tasks, freeing humans to focus on complexity.  I2O envisions a future in which machines are more than just tools that execute pre-programmed instructions: rather, machines will function almost as colleagues, partners, and teammates.  I2O’s symbiosis portfolio develops technologies to enable machines to understand speech and extract information contained in diverse media, to learn, reason and apply knowledge gained through experience, and to respond intelligently to new and unforeseen events.  Symbiosis application areas include cyberspace operations, where highly-scripted, distributed cyber attacks have a speed, complexity, and scale that overwhelms human cyber defenders, intelligence analysis, to which machines can bring objectivity, and command and control, where workloads, timelines and stress can exhaust human operators.
• Exponential increases in computation, storage, and connectivity have fundamentally altered science, engineering, commerce, and national security.  I2O is working to keep the Department of Defense (DoD) at the forefront of data-driven decision-making, knowledge discovery, and design through the creation of advanced analytics.  I2O analytics research and development (R&D) explores fundamental mathematical and computational issues such as complexity and scalability and develops applications in high-impact areas such as intelligence, software engineering, and command and control.  I2O coordinates its R&D with the national security community to ensure timely transition of tools and techniques.
• Cyber threats against our information systems have grown in sophistication and number, and protecting and assuring information is a matter of national security.  DoD recognizes the critical nature of cyberspace operations, and I2O challenges itself to provide the warfighter with technologies and capabilities that ensure successful operations in the cyber domain.  The I2O defensive cyber R&D portfolio focuses on high-end cyber threats, including advanced persistent threats (cyber espionage and cyber sabotage) and other sophisticated threats to embedded computing systems, cyber-physical systems, enterprise information systems, and critical national infrastructure.  I2O explores offensive methods to inform its defensive cyber R&D and to establish viability of developed techniques with transition partners.

I2O may also consider submissions outside these areas if the proposal involves the development of novel software‐based capabilities having a promise to provide decisive information advantage for the U.S. and its allies.

I2O seeks unconventional approaches that are outside the mainstream, challenge accepted assumptions, and have the potential to radically change established practice.  Proposed research should investigate innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances in science, devices, or systems.  Specifically excluded is research that primarily results in evolutionary improvements to the existing state of the art.

Full information is available here.

Source: FedBizOpps