Research Programs
IARPA sponsors cutting-edge research on a broad range of subjects to benefit and support the Intelligence Community. Our Program Managers are currently engaged in four primary research areas, including, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, machine learning and synthetic biology.
To learn more about the types of programs our program managers have supported and are currently supporting, please see the below list. If there is a specific area of your interest that is not listed here, please contact one of our Program Managers for additional information. We welcome the opportunity to discuss your ideas for future research.
The goal of analysis research is to maximize insights from the massive, disparate, unreliable and dynamic data that are--or could be--available to analysts, in a timely manner. Our programs are in diverse technical disciplines but have common features involving potential transition partners at all stages, beginning with the definition of success, creating technologies that can earn the trust of the analyst user by providing the reasoning for results, and addressing uncertainty and data provenance explicitly.
The goal of collections research is to dramatically improve the value of collected data from all sources by developing new sensor and transmission technologies, new collection techniques that more precisely target desired information, and means for collecting information from previously inaccessible sources. In addition, IARPA pursues new mechanisms for combining information gathered from multiple sources to enhance the quality, reliability, and utility of collected information.
BETTER
Dr. Carl Rubino
Massive volumes of multilingual, unstructured text present an overwhelming challenge for analysts...
BRIAR
Dr. Lars Ericson
The BRIAR Program aims to develop software algorithm-based systems capable of performing...
DIVA
Dr. Jack Cooper
Monitoring security video at airports, border crossings, or government facilities is critical for...
FELIX
Dr. David Markowitz
New biotechnologies have enabled the development of diverse biological systems, with potential...
MATERIAL
Dr. Carl Rubino
The MATERIAL program is a 47-month venture seeking to address this challenge by building robust,...
MICrONS
Dr. David Markowitz
MICrONS seeks to close this performance gap by reverse-engineering the algorithms of the brain.
Odin
Dr. Lars Ericson
Biometrics are used by the U.S. government to verify identities and locate persons of interest.
Proteos
Dr. Michael Patterson
DNA is widely used for forensic identification, but analysis of DNA can fail in some cases due to...
SMART
Dr. Jack Cooper
Manual exploitation methods do not scale with the volumes of data available from single individual...
TEI-REX
Dr. Michael Patterson
The goal of the Targeted Evaluation of Ionizing Radiation Exposure (TEI-REX) program is to...
TrojAI
Dr. Donald Hornback
TrojAI aims to defend an AI from intentional, malicious trojan attacks by developing technology to...
AGILE
The AGILE program aims to develop revolutionizing computer architectures and associated integrated...
Fun GCAT
Dr. Sherrie Pilkington
The Functional Genomic and Computational Assessment of Threats (Fun GCAT) program intends to...
LHO
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles have become prevalent in everyday life; to deliver packages, conduct home...
LogiQ
Dr. Michael DiRosa
The LogiQ Program seeks to overcome the limitations of current multi-qubit systems by building a...
MIST
Dr. David Markowitz
The Molecular Information Storage program seeks to use sequence-controlled polymers as the basis...
RAVEN
The RAVEN program aims to develop a prototype analysis tool for acquiring images from all layers...
RESILIENCE
Dr. Dawson Cagle
The IC needs reliable power sources for missions in extreme and challenging environments. This...
SCISRS
Dr. Paul Kolb
The goal of the SCISRS program is to develop smart radio techniques to automatically detect and...
SuperCables
Dr. Bill Harrod
The goal of SuperCables will be to develop technologies that will enable energy-efficient...
SuperTools
Dr. Mark Heiligman
The Intelligence Community is well known to be a major consumer of high performance computing, but...