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Immediate Release

Fiscal Year 2020 University Research Funding Awards

The Department of Defense (DoD) announced $185 million in multidisciplinary university research initiative (MURI) awards to 26 research teams pursuing basic research spanning multiple scientific disciplines.  These five-year grants will be provided to teams located across 52 U.S. academic institutions, subject to satisfactory research progress and the availability of funds.

Since its inception in 1985, the tri-Service MURI program has convened teams of investigators with the hope that collective insight from multiple disciplines could facilitate the growth of newly emerging technologies and address the Department's unique problem sets.

The highly competitive MURI complements the Department's single-investigator basic research grants and has made immense contributions to both defense and society at large. Notable examples include advances in laser frequency combs  that have become the gold standard in frequency control for precision in navigation and targeting; atomic and molecular self-assembly projects that have opened new possibilities for nano-manufacturing; and the field of spintronics, which emerged from a MURI award on magnetic materials and devices research. These and other important technological advances from the MURI program have impact on current and future military capabilities as well as multiple applications in the commercial sector.

''Modern science and engineering problems often intersect more than one scientific discipline,'' said Dr. Bindu Nair, Deputy Director for Basic Research. ''Research of these problems is particularly well suited to a multidisciplinary team effort, which accelerates research progress to enable more rapid R&D breakthroughs by cross-fertilization of ideas, and can hasten the transition of basic research findings to practical applications.''

For the FY2020 competition, the Army Research Office, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Office of Naval Research solicited proposals in 26 topic areas important to the DoD and the military Services. From a merit-based review of the 365 proposals received, a panel of experts narrowed the proposals to a subset from which the 26 final awards were selected.  Here is the list of winning teams that can be downloaded as a PDF.