To explore the increasingly dynamic intersection of biology and the physical sciences, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently created their new Biological Technologies Office (BTO).
The goal is to harness the power of biological systems by applying the rigorous tools of engineering, related disciplines, and then design next-generation technologies inspired by insights gained from the life sciences. BTO’s programs will look at individual cells and organisms and for example and study how long it may take for a new virus to spread around the world.
The BTO will advance and expand on a number of earlier DARPA programs that have made preliminary inroads into the bio-technological frontier,” said Geoff Ling, DARPA’s Director of BTO. “We’ve been developing the technological building blocks, we’ve been analyzing results, and now we are ready to start turning the resulting knowledge into practical tools and capabilities.”
Plans are underway to undertake the first program in the portfolio “Hand Proprioception & Touch Interfaces (HAPTIX) program to expand on DARPA’s Prosthetics and Reliable Neural-Interface Technology program.
State-of-the-art prosthetic limb systems lack an intuitive and effective user interface. Standard-of-care prostheses use technology that was developed over a century ago. As a result, state-of-the-art multifunctional prostheses require mode switching that many users find difficult to learn and awkward to use. HAPTIX research will help to develop interfaces and technologies to provide amputees with limbs that feel and function like their innate limb.
DARPA will be sponsoring a Proposer’s Day on April 30, in Arlington Virginia for the potential proposer community in advance of the planned BAA for the HAPTIX program (DARPA-BAA-13-30). The registration deadline for Proposer’s Day is April 18 and for more information, go to https://safe.sysplan.com/confsys/haptix.
Another program will study how biological systems operate over an enormous range of spatial, physical, and temporal scales. Some organisms thrive as individual cells but most depend on dynamic interactions with other species such as humans.
However, humans are colonized by communities of foreign cells that greatly outnumber their own cells and these foreign cells have a largely mysterious impact on metabolism, psychological state, performance, and health.
It is important to understand how mammalian and non-mammalian species interact with micro and macro organisms in order for scientists to develop new approaches to deal with mental and physical health issues in routine and threatening situations that may exist globally.
Since disease vectors migrate around the globe slowly and stealthily at times, it is important to know why at other times disease vectors operate with breathtaking speed, and how the speed and spread of disease could possibly greatly undermine national security.
For more information, go to www.darpa.mil/our_work/BTO.