Voices from DARPA

Latest Episodes:

Episode 57: Unmasking Misinformation and Manipulation Jun 16, 2022

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In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, we will discuss DARPA’s Influence Campaign Awareness and Sensemaking (INCAS) program. Adversaries exploit misinformation and true information through compelling narratives propagated on social media and online content. INCAS seeks new tools to help analysts quickly identify geopolitical influence campaigns amidst today’s noisy information environment and find better ways to determine the impacts of such propaganda.

You’ll hear from leaders of teams working on aspects of the INCAS program – from identifying narratives using lessons from the entertainment industry to exploring how different people react to the same messages – in addition to INCAS Program Manager Brian Kettler. As Kettler says: “Propaganda is not new, but the speed and scale of it is new. The information ecosystem is rapidly evolving. Our adversaries are getting better all the time.”

Episode 56: The Future of Food - Meals from Microbes May 26, 2022

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Did you know that there’s more energy in the packaging of an MRE than what’s in the food?

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, we’re discussing “The Future of Food: Meals from Microbes.”

First, we will hear from Dr. Molly Jahn, program manager for the Cornucopia program, which seeks to enable food production on-demand and on-site.

Next, we’ll speak with Dr. Blake Bextine, who manages the ReSource program, and Dr. Stephen Techtmann from Michigan Technological University, who serves as a program performer on their unique approaches to this daunting problem. That program aims to turn military waste – including plastics - into oils, lubricants, and food.

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/voices-from-darpa/id1163190520

Resources:

FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO. 2021. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021. Transforming food systems for food security, improved nutrition and affordable healthy diets for all. Rome, https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/nutritionlibrary/publications/state-food-security-nutrition-2021-en.pdf?sfvrsn=84e0ae0c_12&download=true

Episode 55: Sensorized Prosthetics Apr 04, 2022

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In this episode, we’ll hear from some of the key stakeholders - including Drs. Al Emondi and Dustin J. Tyler - related to the DARPA Hand Proprioception and Touch program, or HAPTIX for short. The goal of HAPTIX, which is part of DARPA’s extensive neurotechnology portfolio, is to create and transition clinically relevant technology in support of wounded warriors suffering from single or multiple limb loss.

We discuss the program’s impact, not only on from a scientific perspective, but more importantly, from a human one. We’ll also learn about various regulatory aspects of the work; ethical, legal and societal implications; and what’s next in the field of prosthetics.

Episode 54: Climate Tipping Points Mar 14, 2022

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In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, we’ll explore a new program with the goal of better identifying and predicting sudden and catastrophic climate change tipping points. Such events could cause major and abrupt disruption to both weather and life on our planet. DARPA’s AI-assisted Climate Tipping-point Modeling (ACTM) program aims to advance artificial intelligence and machine learning to model complex processes that affect Earth’s climate, looking for signs of it going disastrously awry. You’ll hear from the program manager and people working on aspects of the problem, as well as learn about one especially troubling possibility – the slowing, or even entire collapse, of the Atlantic Ocean’s circulating current. “DARPA’s job is to help the United States avoid strategic surprise,” says ACTM program manager Joshua Elliott, “and in my mind there’s no bigger risk or strategic surprise than a sudden and massive and irreversible change in some of the key Earth systems that we rely on for survival.”

Episode 53: So, You Want to Become a DARPA Program Manager? Jan 12, 2022

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In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, listeners will hear a “best hits” medley from program managers (PMs), who since 2016 have chronicled in the podcast their joy, sense of accomplishment, scientific stimulation, privilege to influence entire fields of research and development, sense of mission as they further the cause of national defense and security, fun, and, in short, the overall awesomeness of their jobs. Every program manager arrives at DARPA with an expiration date on their badges. It’s a short-term deal that constantly brings in new blood and is routinely cited as part of DARPA’s “special sauce.” Those who become PMs know their jobs likely will end three to five years after they start. Yet so many of them say there is no better job and that they wouldn’t have it any other way. Their collective message is that being a DARPA PM can be a dream job for just about any scientist or engineer, whether they are only beginning to rev up their careers; already making a name for their themselves in an academic, start-up, industry, or government setting; or in search of a second-career to apply the experience and wisdom they have accrued over previous decades of work. At the end of the podcast, DARPA director and former program manager Stefanie Tompkins encapsulates the collective message of the many DARPA voices in this episode: “The program manager is the center of DARPA. The PMs, each and every one of them, has a chance to change the world.”

Episode 52: The Embedded Entrepreneurship Initiative Dec 01, 2021

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In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, listeners will learn about an emerging component of DARPA’s institutional culture for delivering technologies that strengthen the nation and redefine what is possible. Called the Embedded Entrepreneurship Initiative (EEI), this effort is designed to help creative scientists and engineers usher their new high-technology visions all of the way to real in-field, hold-in-your-hand, useful-in-the-world technologies. The mission of EEI, now entering its second year following a pilot phase, is to provide early-stage technology-development teams with veteran innovators who bring with them the proven business savvy it takes to make it through the proverbial Valley of Death. That’s when anything from insufficient funding, missed deadlines, unexpected supply-chain issues, intellectual property disputes, market fluctuations, a federal policy change, or any number of other hazards can kill off even the best of technology ideas. Listeners will hear from Kacy Gerst, DARPA’s Chief of Commercial Strategy; Scott Cunningham, a Senior Commercialization Advisor with In-Q-Tel-Emerge, a technology-acceleration organization that is partnering with DARPA to make EEI work; and Jeff Conroy, CEO of Embody, an emerging biotechnology company that credits EEI with accelerating its success in launching what is now its first FDA-approved biomedical technology for improving ligament and tendon repair, a common need for athletes and military personnel. Gerst is happy to note that EEI already is working with more than 50 entrepreneurial teams and she expects the initiative to ramp up over the next few years to a portfolio of 150 such teams.

Episode 51: The Cybersecurity Sleuth Nov 02, 2021

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In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Sergey Bratus, a program manager since 2018 in the agency’s Information Innovation Office, shares his educational and professional journey, beginning in the late 1970s as a computer-smitten middle-schooler in the former Soviet Union and leading to his current and prominent role among those who aim to render the increasingly prevalent and perilous software, hardware, and networks in our lives much safer to use. His fascination with computer security emerged in the 1990s as a mathematics graduate student when a computer he was programming and responsible for at Northeastern University in Boston was taken over by a hacker. “I probably owe whoever did that a beer,” Bratus tells listeners. Why? Because it set him on his life’s mission to learn as much as he can about the vulnerabilities of software and hardware with the goal of learning how to best minimize or eliminate those vulnerabilities. Noting his embrace of the hacker community for its deep and innovative expertise in this context, Bratus tells podcast listeners about how the programs he oversees at DARPA could help reduce or entirely remove even some of the most stealthy and unexpected vulnerabilities that reside in software and its logical, computational, and mathematical foundations.

Episode 50: The Photonicist Oct 12, 2021

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In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Gordon Keeler, a program manager since 2017 in the agency’s Microsystems Technology Office, takes listeners on a scenic tour of his efforts to integrate electrons and photons in ways that do more computing, more sensing, more decision-making, and more artificial intelligence in cheaper, smaller, lighter, and more energy-efficient packages than has been possible previously. His work is a showcase of what technology insiders refer to as SWaP-C, which stands for Size, Weight and Power, and Cost. Innovations that shrink one or all of those aspects of a technology can be far more important to realizing practical, affordable technologies and capabilities than the invention itself. As Keeler explains how these and other technology drivers unfold in the half-dozen electronic, photonic, and optoelectronic programs he oversees, he also reveals what inspired him to give up the stable and secure job he held for 14 years before arriving at DARPA. “I had no doubt really in my mind, DARPA clearly was the pinnacle of doing really innovative scientific research and development and leading the community to go do new things,” Keeler tells listeners. “I wanted to make an impact and DARPA was clearly a way to do that."

Episode 49: A Decade of Living Foundries Sep 15, 2021

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This episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast takes listeners on a tour of an audacious, decade-long project to merge biology and engineering into one of the most powerful engines of molecular invention the world has known. Although plenty of work remains to be done, the program, Living Foundries, is winding down to a close. But not before its community of research performers and collaborators already has delivered a new and versatile biotechnology platform whose consequences have begun to ripple out. New companies. Follow-on investments. Chemical- and materials-based technologies for the Department of Defense … and perhaps one day for the public at large. Featured in the podcast are reflections form three of the program managers who have been stewards of the program, two research performers who helped make real the vision of Living Foundries, and even the sound of one potential Living Foundries product doing what it does best.

Episode 48: The Inner-Machine Therapist Aug 19, 2021

Show notes

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, John-Francis Mergen, a program manager since 2020 in the agency’s Information Innovation Office, recounts how his interest in science took off as a child when he received a gift of a low-power magnifier from a family friend who was a geologist. From that gift, Mergen says, he learned about the power of observation and of the mindset one brings into that elemental component of the scientific enterprise. For his part, Mergen has spent a lot of time observing the complex ebbs and flows of data packets, which are mobile portions of information that race every which way through the internet and then get reassembled on your computer into a web page, a picture, or an email message. One of the first DARPA programs Mergen started to run last year aims to optimize the efficiency of packet traffic and management based on dynamic prioritization of information categories, such as text, voice or images, while preserving privacy and confidentiality for the sender and recipient of those packets. Another program Mergen runs is anticipating emerging threats associated with the exploding population of internet-connected-devices—the Internet-of-Things (IoT)—with an eye on security-enhancing communications protocols. Mergen has skin in the game: he says he has several hundred devices (including an internet-connected beehive!) at home that are connected to the Internet. One of his newest programs, if successful, will deliver technology that applies artificial intelligence to manage IoT devices so that they automatically and securely configure themselves, in his words, “in a way that is useful but not in a way that can be used” by adversaries, criminals, and others seeking to do harm. In a program just getting underway, Mergen envisions vehicles, manufacturing tools, and other technologies with a kind of self-awareness, which would be based on the many sensors, actuation devices, and computers in their designs, along with the ability to leverage this gadget-based self-awareness into automatic adjustments of operations. The payoff? Mergen says it could lead to more capable and longer-lasting technologies that could bring out their own best in changing circumstances. One possibility is that already-deployed technologies would “discover” capabilities they have in specific situations that not even their designers had in mind.

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