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 on the relentlessly evolving public-health threats that viral and bacterial pathogens pose. Another program is immersed in the challenge of the increasing scarcity of potable water. If Seth has it his way, these programs will deliver 1) a new strategy for fighting viral infections; 2) a powerful anti-bacterial framework that will recruit our bodies’ home-made, protective molecular means to stave off the emerging public-health catastrophe of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections; and 3) technologies for extracting water from the atmosphere in regions where water is scarce. Seth also shares his government-service experiences by which he has come to know the value of science policy in moving society toward badly-needed solutions. He finishes his story with a pitch to graduate students and others in the innovation ecosystems to embrace exciting and consequential roles in the government R&D landscape that they might not know about, including ones at DARPA. Says Seth in support of that advice, “DARPA has been…one of the best places I could ever imagine working.” When he is not uncovering new marvels of cellular chemistry or opening pathways to new technologies, Seth, a fan and amateur historian of muscle cars, just might be seen tooling around in his 1963 Corvette Stingray convertible.

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 current work at DARPA to develop technologies to better understand, monitor, and navigate the planet’s most prevalent environment—the oceans. In one of his ambitious programs, John seeks to deliver what has been a coveted but elusive capability—the equivalent of GPS that operates even in the deep ocean. In a related program, John explains how very low-frequency (VLF) electromagnetic signals from lightning that occurs relentlessly around the world can become a key to a back-up positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) system in case our must-have GPS goes down. And in perhaps his most audacious program, the Ocean of Things, he is assembling what amounts to an ocean-scale nervous systems comprising tens of thousands of floating sensors, opening pathways to an unprecedentedly fine-grained understanding of what is happening in vast ocean environments. Says John about the ocean, “it’s so immense, covering 70% of the Earth’s surface, yet even with all of the ships, all of the aircraft, all of the satellites, and all of the existing sensors, we are severely undersampling this environment.” He has made it his mission to fill in that data shortfall, which he says could significantly improve weather forecasting for the benefit of both military and civilian sectors.

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 could lead to.

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. His portfolio of programs at DARPA aims to deliver materials that increase the practical range of hypersonic vehicles by breaking the “heat barrier,” that is, by taming the extreme heat flows on surfaces of hypersonic platforms; thermoelectric materials and systems for quiet, portable power generation in contested areas; and nanoscale-engineered materials suitable for such jobs as replacing tendons and printing electronics as easily as laser-printing a photograph. Says Carter, “I have absolutely unbounded optimism about the potential for science to solve today’s most important problems and I think materials science can contribute.”

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), his programs dive deeply into the pathbreaking hardware, software, computational techniques, power efficiencies, and innovation communities that it will take to do more with the electromagnetic spectrum than ever before. Think of every cellphone call ever made, of satellite communication, and now of billions of devices communicating wirelessly via apps and the internet. And now think beyond all of that. The tattoos of Maxwell’s Equations — which famously capture the behavior of electromagnetic waves as discerned by the 19th century physicist James Clerk Maxwell — on Tom’s forearms reveal just how devoted he is to his technology-development mission. “I look down at those every day and have a moment of awe about what we have been able to do,” he tells listeners. And then he has another moment of awe as he imagines how much more he might be able to pull off as a DARPA program manager.

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, recently reached a milestone with the placement from the International Space Station of a dime-sized deformable mirror on a loaf-sized CubeSat platform. The goal of DeMi is to deliver cheaper, lighter, smaller telescope mirrors—in the form of a microelectromechanical system (MEMS)—that could open unprecedented options for space-based ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) technology that, in Stacie’s words, “helps us understand what’s going on with a space eyeview.” In another optics-tech effort under Stacie’s wing, researchers are learning how to design so-called metamaterials—with engineered microstructures that manipulate electromagnetic wavelengths—that also could greatly simplify, lighten, and cheapen far more massive, complex, and expensive conventional telescopes. In the podcast, Stacie also recounts her work beyond technology as a champion of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education for economically disadvantaged communities.

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 channels and modes of communications — is evaporating. Another program gets at a different kind of crucial trust: human trust in the AI tools that are becoming embedded and influential in our everyday lives and in government responsibilities including national security and defense. And in yet another program, Turek is asking the research talent out there to build one of the most powerful components of human intelligence into artificial intelligence: common sense. Turek says he hopes to encourage AI researchers to, in his words, “work together in ways that aren’t currently happening or maybe they didn’t envision happening.”

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 signals in the atmosphere as indicators of both natural and human activities on the planet’s surface. He also shares a timely chronicle of his navigation, as a Black person, through the individual and systemic racism that confronted him as he pursued his love of science (which his sixth-grade teacher and key educational ally recognized) and later his ambition to become a fighter pilot (and even an astronaut), a physicist, and then to land what he calls his “dream job” as a DARPA program manager. Amidst the vexing challenges to fully open educational and professional opportunities to all Americans, David has a forwarding-looking message for listeners. “We are going to evolve,” he says. “It’s important for all Americans now to think about what they want the future to look like.”

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 distinct possibility for the future, suggests program manager Jiangying Zhou of the agency’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO). On the way toward that ideal, adds program manager Joshua Elliott of the Information Innovation Office (I2O), we are likely to rely on scientifically-minded AI tools to pump up the efficiency of scientific discovery and to tap into the vast and growing reservoirs of data, which biological minds might not be as suited to make sense of as AI ones. For Bartlett Russell, also of DSO, perhaps the most important advance during the evolution toward a Science 2.0 era will reside in the use of AI tools that enable more people than ever to embrace the scientific enterprise. The more minds doing science, she says, the more discovery we can expect.

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 machine viable while also preserving or even enhancing the operation of civilian must-haves ranging from financial transactions to ridesharing (think Uber and Lyft). Burke has teams of researchers pursuing magnificently sensitive magnetometers for detecting objects, materials, and activities otherwise hidden underground, underwater, or behind bone. Among these sensors’ potential applications is real-time, in-field diagnostics and monitoring of concussions, whether in battlefield or sports field settings. These and other sensing capabilities Burke is fostering are based largely on the quantum-mechanical ways that atoms behave (e.g., the nuclear oscillations that serve at the invariant ticks of atomic clocks) or respond to signals in the world (e.g., faint magnetic fields from brains or buried ordnance). The overall goal of this quantum-mechanical finessing, Burke says, is to “peer around the curtain to see more and more of everything around us.”