The Department of Defense (DoD) announced the selection of 11 university scientists and engineers for the 2024 class of the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship (VBFF), its flagship single-investigator award for basic research. The department will support this cohort with up to $33 million to explore new frontiers in knowledge and advance transformative, fundamental research at their respective institutions.
Named after Dr. Vannevar Bush, who significantly influenced defense research as the director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development post-World War II, the VBFF aims to foster high-risk and innovative ideas that drive breakthrough discoveries.
"The Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship is more than a prestigious program. It's a beacon for tenured faculty embarking on groundbreaking ‘blue sky' research," said Dr. Bindu Nair, director of the Basic Research Office in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. "Through this fellowship, DoD empowers some of the nation's most talented researchers to pursue ambitious ideas that defy conventional boundaries. The outcomes of VBFF-funded research have transformed entire disciplines, birthed novel fields, and challenged established theories and perspectives."
The 2024 awardees join an elite group of approximately 50 fellows conducting basic research for the DoD across various disciplines such as materials science, cognitive neuroscience, quantum information sciences, and applied mathematics. Beyond individual projects, fellows collaborate directly with DoD laboratories, facilitating a valuable exchange of knowledge.
"By contributing their insights to DoD leadership and engaging with the broader national security community, they enrich collective understanding and help the United States leap ahead in global technology competition," added Nair.
The Basic Research Office sponsors VBFF while grants are managed by the Office of Naval Research. For fiscal year 2024's competition, 170 white papers were submitted; from these submissions, panels invited 27 proposals before recommending 11 fellows. Each fellow will receive up to $3 million over five years to pursue cutting-edge fundamental research projects.
For more information on VBFF: https://basicresearch.defense.gov.
The 2024 Class of Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellows:
- Houman Owhadi (California Institute of Technology): Computational Hypergraph Discovery
- Domitilla Del Vecchio (Massachusetts Institute of Technology): Analog Epigenetic Cell Memory: Biology and Engineering
- James Speck (University of California, Santa Barbara): Beyond the Band Minima: High Energy Electron Dispersion
- Mehrdad Jazayeri (Massachusetts Institute of Technology): An Embodied Neuroscience for Cognition and Emotion
- Andrew Cleland (University of Chicago): Building a Phonon-Based Quantum Computer
- Emilia Morosan (Rice University): Correlated Topological Materials in a "New Light"
- Joseph Heremans (Ohio State University): Polarization Caloritronics
- Xiaodong Xu (University of Washington): Realizing Non-Abelian Anyons
- Themistoklis Sapsis (Massachusetts Institute of Technology): Generative Active Modeling Along Unstable Dynamics for Capturing Unprecedented Extreme Events
- Oleg Gang (Columbia University): Evolving Materials
- Cristopher Niell (University of Oregon): Neural Circuits and Computations in the Octopus Visual System
