Sidebars
Registered attendees will have the option to participate in a 10-minute sidebar meeting on Tuesday, November 3 or Wednesday, November 4 with (1) MXO Program Managers for technical discussion, and or (2) MXO Leadership to learn about DARPA MXO Program Manager position opportunities. Attendees can request either one of the options or both options. For Option (1), attendees may request a sidebar meeting (via your registration) with up to three (3) of the MXO Program Managers listed below. For Option (2), attendees who are interested in a discussion related to the DARPA MXO Program Manager position may request a meeting (via your registration) with MXO Leadership.
The Capability Summary submission will determine the selection of the sidebar meetings; sidebars will be scheduled until capacity is met for each MXO person. Sidebar meetings are not guaranteed; attendees may not receive a requested meeting due to scheduling capacities. Prior to the event, attendees selected for sidebar meetings will be notified of their meeting time and on-site instructions. No additional sidebar meetings will be scheduled on-site during the MXO Spark Tank event.
To allow for the widest breadth of attendance within the in-person sidebar meetings, no more than two (2) representatives per organization unit (e.g., subsidiary, segment, sector, etc.), and eight (8) people per overall organization (e.g., parent company), may participate in the event. The determination of what constitutes an organization will be made by the DARPA MXO Office Director. Registrants are strongly encouraged to coordinate attendance internally within their organizations prior to registration and requesting to participate in the sidebar meeting(s).
*Pitch Day Invitees will be ineligible to participate in the PM sidebar sessions.
MXO Leadership and Program Managers
Dr. Travis Autry is focused on creating next-generation capabilities for sensing, communications, and photonics. His interests include (1) new methods for quantum sensor manufacturing that enable scaled integration, (2) sensing and photonics that leverage quantum enhancement, (3) scalable classical and quantum platform-platform networking of sensors with integrated photonics, (5) new sensors or sensing modalities that enable enhanced battlefield awareness, (5) photonic circuits enabling high peak power optical arbitrary waveform generation in the visible spectrum.
Excluded topics include evolutionary advancements of the above topics and warm microscale vapor cell technologies.
Dr. Todd Bauer's professional interests include radiation-hardened microsystems, microsystems fabrication, and supply chain assurance.
Dr. Jason Chou is focused on fundamentally rethinking the computing stack through the tight co-design of unconventional hardware and novel algorithms. Driven by the physical limits of traditional chip manufacturing, his research interests center on exploiting new physics at the intersection of thermodynamics, probabilistic bits, and non-linear photonics to address specific, well-defined technological problems where conventional CPU-GPU platforms currently underperform. He is specifically seeking approaches that map complex algorithms directly onto physical substrates while dynamically accounting for device non-idealities.
Topics of limited interest include incremental digital scaling, purely materials-discovery proposals, and hardware concepts with no clear path to application-level outperformance.
Dr. Justin Cohen seeks to revolutionize optics with microsystems that do more than miniaturize free-space and fiber-optic systems, but rather provide unique functionality and performance attributes. Example microsystem topics of strong interest include:
- Integrated quantum photonics and nonlinear optics for sensing, especially exploiting non-classical states of light
- Ultra-low-noise microsystems leveraging chip-scale optics for sensing and communications
- Microsystems that create and exploit strong light-matter interactions and extreme optical nonlinearity
- Multiphysical microsystems exploiting couplings between optics, acoustics, radio frequency/microwave, etc.
- Photonic integration platforms supporting multiple types of quantum resources for sensing and computing
Such systems require innovations in a combination of domains from materials, devices, circuits, integration and packaging, and applications that can effectively utilize the novel underlying capabilities. Concepts that focus solely on a single layer of this framework, such as Isolated demonstrations of individual photonic devices, and application demonstrations that primarily leverage existing photonic platforms, are of limited interest. As an application domain, signal processing and classical computing are also of limited interest.
Dr. Jeff Daulton is interested in pursuing paradigm-disrupting technologies that use approaches underpinned by physics, chemistry, AI/ML, and advanced processing to break the typical trade space in design of advanced microelectronics and materials.
Dr. John M. Hoffman is focused on reimagining the intersection of molecular engineering, computer science, and microsystems. Topics of interest include: (1) integrating single molecules and microsystems for sensing, actuation, and computation applications, (2) microsystems-based approaches to controlling and measuring molecular dynamics across time and length scales, (3) molecule-driven approaches to additive, subtractive, and hybrid materials synthesis, (4) synthetic biological and molecular systems that overcome important scientific computing challenges, and (5) the intersection of molecular engineering and bottom-up manufacturing to enable 3D fabrication at scale.
Dr. Jonathan Hoffman, Deputy Director
Dr. Jonathan Hoffman is the is the deputy director of the Multi X Office (MXO). His research interests include quantum sensing and information science, PNT, optics, and photonics. Dr. Hoffman will not be holding a sidebar meeting, but will be available during all networking events.
Dr. Whitney Mason, Office Director
Dr. Whitney Mason is focused on recruiting technical experts with in-depth knowledge across materials, components, tools, or processes and with multi-discipline mindset to establish DARPA programs in effects, energy, quantum, organics, materials, new compute, robotics, and photonics.
Dr. Julian McMorrow has varied technical interests, spanning microsystem manufacture and energy generation/storage in supply-constrained environments; untethered robotics; large-scale assembly of nanomaterials; and radiation-hardened electronics technologies as key mission enablers. Materials-driven solutions that leverage emergent behavior or assembly techniques are of particular interest.
Dr. David Meyer seeks to leverage emerging materials and manufacturing methods to enable broad-impact, leap-ahead capabilities for national security. He is interested in a range of topics including (1) electronic, optoelectronic, and acoustic applications of ultrawide bandgap materials and devices, (2) multi-material expansion of nanoscale additive manufacturing, and (3) technologies that enable energy delivery and storage via light.
Additional areas of interest include (1) new algorithms and processes for 3D microsystem design and fabrication, (2) novel piezoelectric, flexoelectric, or similar transduction systems where high performance is achieved through organics, superlattices, disorder, or macrostructure., and (3) laser gain medium and device architectures that offer a high degree of frequency tunability, mode shaping, and non-mechanical beam steering.
Excluded topics of limited interest include (1) conventional piezoelectric or flexoelectric materials based on inorganic nanometer sized periodic cell lattices, (2) evolutionary device development where performance metric is not improved by 10x or more, and (3) simple geometric scaling of existent technologies to application-relevant sizes or volumes.
Dr. Thomas Schratwieser’s work focuses on the use of advanced physics, chemistry, and materials science to simplify logistics and increase the reliability and efficacy of military systems in less-than-ideal conditions. He is interested in methods for all-weather high-data-rate optical communications, as well as methods for passive, GPS-free navigation.
Additional topics of interest include (1) natively radiation-hardened compute and memory, (2) uses for exquisitely-synchronized moving platforms, and (3) accurate, high-bandwidth accelerometry.
Dr. Anna Tauke-Pedretti's interests include compound semiconductor devices, optoelectronics, and heterogeneously integrated microsystems.
Dr. Huanan Zhang is passionate about tackling complex technical challenges at the intersection of materials and manufacturing. He is focused on (1) advanced material synthesis technologies, (2) new material interface design, (3) breakthrough chemical processing technologies, and (4) organic platforms for high performance devices and systems. He believes in the power of interdisciplinary collaboration, leveraging expertise from various scientific and engineering fields to generate high-impact solutions for mission-critical applications.