The Department of Defense (DoD) announced plans today to make 32 awards to academic institutions to perform multidisciplinary basic research.\u00a0 The total amount of the awards is expected to be $227 million over five years.\u00a0 Awards are subject to the successful completion of negotiations between the academic institutions and DoD research offices that will make the awards: the Army Research Office (ARO), the Office of Naval Research (ONR), and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR).<\/p>\n
The awards are the result of the fiscal 2010 competition that ARO, ONR, and AFOSR conducted under the DoD Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) program.\u00a0 The MURI program supports research by teams of investigators that intersect more than one traditional science and engineering discipline in order to accelerate both research progress and transition of research results to application.\u00a0 Most MURI efforts involve researchers from multiple academic institutions and academic departments.\u00a0 Based on the proposals selected in the fiscal 2010 competition, a total of 67 academic institutions are expected to participate in the 32 research efforts.<\/p>\n
The MURI program complements other DoD basic research programs that support traditional, single-investigator university research by supporting multidisciplinary teams with larger and longer awards.\u00a0 The awards announced today are for a five year period subject to availability of appropriations and satisfactory research progress.\u00a0 Consequently, MURI awards can provide greater sustained support than single-investigator awards for the education and training of students pursuing advanced degrees in science and engineering fields critical to DoD, as well as for associated infrastructure such as research instrumentation.<\/p>\n
The MURI program is highly competitive.\u00a0 ARO, ONR, and AFOSR solicited proposals in 30 topics important to DoD and received a total of 411 white papers, which were followed by 152 proposals.\u00a0 The awards announced today were selected based on merit review by panels of experts.<\/p>\n
The list of projects selected for fiscal 2010 funding may be found on the Web at:\u00a0http:\/\/www.defense.gov\/news\/d20100716MURI.pdf<\/a>\u00a0.<\/p>\n CORRECTION:\u00a0 July 19, 2010 – Under MURI Topic 15, Michigan State University is corrected from University of Michigan.<\/p>\n