The Department of Defense will issue 24 awards totaling $169 million to academic institutions to perform multidisciplinary basic research through the Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative program. The awards are for up to a five year period, subject to satisfactory research progress and the availability of funds.
MURI awards supports basic research in carefully chosen and relevant research topics to enhance the potential for significant and sustained advancement of research in critical areas of importance to National Security and the DoD’s mission. This year, for the first time, Australia has funded research teams to work together with two U.S. MURI teams. This cooperation is in line with the Secretary of Defense’s direction to strengthen our alliances, and collaborate whenever and wherever possible.
Over the past 30 years, DoD’s MURI program resulted in significant capabilities for our military forces and opened up entirely new lines of research. Notable examples include foundations in the fabrication of nanoscale and microscale structures by the processes of self-assembled materials (SAM) and microcontact printing, the integration of vision algorithms with sensors to create low-power, low-latency, compact adaptive vision systems, and advances in fully optical data control and switching.
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