MARCH 22, 2023 – The DoD announced $220 million in awards for basic research projects as part of the Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) Program.
At an average award amount of $7.1 million over five years, these competitive grants will support 31 teams located at 61 U.S. academic institutions, subject to satisfactory research progress and the availability of funds.
“The MURI program has a long-standing history of funding research teams with creative and diverse solutions to complex problems,” said Ms. Heidi Shyu, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. “Not only does the program enable scientific breakthroughs with direct relevance for DoD applications, it also has been used to create and sustain new fields of inquiry. It is a program with a powerful legacy of scientific impact and remains a cornerstone of DoD’s basic research portfolio.”
Since its inception in 1985, the Department’s MURI program has funded teams of investigators with the hope that collective insights from multiple disciplines could facilitate the growth of cutting-edge technologies to address the Department’s unique problem sets.
The highly competitive MURI program, which complements the Department’s single-investigator basic research grants, has made immense contributions to current and future military capabilities and resulted in multiple commercial sector applications.
Notable MURI achievements include breakthroughs in cold atom quantum methods with potential applications in quantum sensing and communication as well as advances in pulsed magnetic field propagation and Doppler radar detection leading to new detection physics for landmines.
For the fiscal year 2023 competition, the Army Research Office, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Office of Naval Research solicited proposals in 24 topic areas of strategic importance to the Department.
After a merit-based review of 259 white papers, a panel of experts narrowed the pool to a subset of 90 full proposals, from which the 31 final awards were selected. The list of winning teams can be downloaded here.
About USD(R&E)
The Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (USD(R&E)) is the Chief Technology Officer of the Department of Defense. The USD(R&E) champions research, science, technology, engineering, and innovation to maintain the U.S. military’s technological advantage. Learn more at www.cto.mil, follow us on Twitter @DoDCTO, or visit us on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/ousdre.