Voices from DARPA

In this episode of the Voices form DARPA podcast, listeners get a status report on DARPA’s ambitious and expansive Electronics Resurgence Initiative (ERI) and learn about the many touchpoints that DARPA and the microelectronics sector have shared over the past half-century. Also in the podcast is a preview of a follow-on effort, ERI 2.0, which is designed to accelerate the transition of foundation...

Go into a science or engineering laboratory. Close your eyes. And listen. Welcome to our third Sounds of Innovation episode, an intermittent feature of our Voices from DARPA podcast. Rather than hearing the voices of program managers, which is normally what you get in a Voices from DARPA podcast, in each Sounds of Innovation episode, you hear some of the soundscapes of research and development, an...

  Voices from DARPA podcast, Scott Wierzbanowski, a program manager since 2016 in the agency’s Tactical Technology Office , recounts how he came of age in a family of test pilots and then embraced the mission of fostering technologies for amplifying the capabilities of airmen, their aircraft, and other defense assets in the sky. Recorded in March 2021, a month before the end of his tour of duty at...

  In this episode of the  Voices from DARPA podcast, Whitney Mason , a program manager since 2017 in the agency’s Microsystems Technology Office , explains how she became smitten with the science and technology of imaging. Even as a child, Mason was curious about the world, wondering about everything, she says, from why the sky is blue to what makes concrete hard. But what ended up inspiring her m...

  In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Bruce Draper , a program manager since 2019 in the agency’s Information Innovation Office , explains how his fascination with the ways people reason, think, and believe what they believe steered him into a lifelong embrace of computer science and artificial intelligence (AI) research. At DARPA, Draper—who says he welcomes working at a place where...

Welcome to Sounds of Innovation , an intermittent feature of our Voices from DARPA podcast. Rather than hearing the voices of program managers, which is normally what you get in a Voices from DARPA podcast, in each Sounds of Innovation episode, you will hear some of the soundscapes of research and development … and learn just a little bit about the world-changing capabilities those sounds could le...

  In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Seth Cohen , a program manager since 2019 in the agency’s Biological Technologies Office , takes listeners on a scientific journey that began with childhood fossil-hunting forays with his biology-teacher dad and is unfolding now in his oversight of three ambitious programs that center on some of humanity’s most pressing needs. Two of these take o...

In this episode of the  Voices from DARPA podcast,  John Waterston , a program manager since 2017 in the agency’s  Strategic Technology Office , lets listeners in on his oceanic immersions both as a naval officer and a technology developer. Now a commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve, John offers snapshots of living, working, and serving on our nation’s nuclear submarines before describing his curre...

  Welcome to Sounds of Innovation , a new intermittent feature of our Voices from DARPA podcast. Rather than hearing the voices of program managers, which is normally what you get in a Voices from DARPA podcast, in each Sounds of Innovation episode, you will hear some of the soundscapes of research and development…and learn just a little bit about what new world-changing capabilities those sounds...

In this episode of the  Voices from DARPA podcast, William (Bill) Carter, a program manager since 2018 in the agency’s Defense Sciences Office, recounts his scientific journey. It began with childhood wonder amidst star-blazoned New Mexico skies and high-school summer jobs at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and has taken him now, literally, to leading edges of materials science and engineering. Hi...

  In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Tom Rondeau , a program manager since 2016 — first in the agency’s Microsystems Technology Office before switching over this year to the Strategic Technology Office — takes listeners on a kaleidoscopic tour of his efforts to usher wireless technology into a new era. Anchored in an emerging technology arena known as software-defined radio (SDR), h...

  In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Stacie Williams , a program manager since 2019 in the agency’s Tactical Technology Office , reveals how a lifelong love of optical and photonic phenomena, beginning with fireflies during her childhood, is now unfolding in her stewardship of ambitious light-and-optics-centric programs at DARPA. One of these, the Deformable Mirror (DeMi) program, r...

  In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Matt Turek, a program manager since 2018 in the agency’s Information Innovation Office, discusses his portfolio of artificial intelligence (AI) programs that could not be more timely. Two of these programs map onto this harrowing moment in history where one of the most precious assets we can have as a society — trust in media and in various chann...

  In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Air Force Lt. Col. C. David Lewis, a program manager since 2018 in the agency’s Defense Sciences Office, takes listeners on a tour of the amazingly diverse portfolio of programs he oversees. The foci of these range from the deep math underlying optimization challenges, such as planning complex routes and managing supply chains, to using untapped...

  In this thematic episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, three program managers discuss the possibility that emerging technologies in the arena of artificial intelligence (AI) are converging toward an “artificial-science” toolset that could open an era we might designate as Science 2.0. The prospect of AI scientists making Nobel-prize-caliber discoveries is not around the corner, but it is a d...

  In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Dr. John Burke, a program manager since 2017 in the agency’s Microsystems Technology Office (MTO), goes deep, quantum-mechanics deep. The miniaturized, affordable, and ultrastable atomic clocks he hopes to make possible would kick in if the GPS system were to go down due to natural or adversarial actions. Such clocks could keep the military machi...

  In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Dr. Michael Fiddy, a program manager since 2016 in the agency’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO), takes listeners on a whirlwind tour of his programs. They all share a common thread, which stems from Fiddy's lifelong interest in how light — electromagnetic (EM) energy, more generally — interacts with matter. At DARPA, he has expressed that interest...

  In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Dr. Timothy Chung, a program manager since 2016 in the agency's Tactical Technology Office, delves into his robotics and autonomous technology programs – the Subterranean (SubT) Challenge and OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET). From robot soccer to live-fly experimentation programs involving dozens of unmanned aircraft systems (UASs), he ex...

  In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Mark Wrobel, a program manager since 2019 in the agency’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO), chronicles progress in the SIGMA+ program and its potential near-term relevance to monitoring the environment for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The now-completed predecessor program, SIGMA, delivered a sensor and analysis system for detecting im...

  In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Eric Van Gieson, a program manager since 2017 in the agency’s Biological Technologies Office (BTO), recounts how a boyhood fascination with DARPA ultimately led to his current role overseeing a portfolio of envelope-pushing programs. These include a program that seeks new diagnostic tools for perhaps the earliest-possible detection of exposure to...

  In this episode of Voices from DARPA, we turn again to Dr. Anne Fischer , a program manager since 2017 in the agency’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO), this time to learn how she has been swerving two of her programs in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. One of those programs, Accelerating Molecular Discovery (AMD) , centers on developing machine-learning and other computational techniques to dram...

We find ourselves in pandemic times. The global population is under siege by an infectious virus new to humankind. It’s called Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2. It’s the causative agent of the pandemic disease designated COVID-19. This viral adversary knows no politics. It recognizes no national boundaries. It is unconcerned with anyone’s identity. All 7.8 billion of...

  In this episode of our Voices from DARPA podcast, Joseph Evans, a program manager since 2015 in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Strategic Technology Office (STO), shares with listeners how his embrace of data, communications technologies, and the electromagnetic spectrum—the invisible place where radio, radar, and other radio frequency (RF) signals live and propagate—has led to t...

  In this episode of our Voices from DARPA podcast, Joseph Evans, a program manager since 2015 in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Strategic Technology Office (STO), shares with listeners how his embrace of data, communications technologies, and the electromagnetic spectrum—the invisible place where radio, radar, and other radio frequency (RF) signals live and propagate—has led to t...

  In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Anne Fischer, a program manager since 2017 in the agency’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO), recounts how she has been applying a chemist’s mindset, which began taking hold in her as a child when her parents gave her a chemistry set, in her boundary-pushing portfolio of extreme-chemistry projects at DARPA. In one of them, she is overseeing research...