About
Innovative Approaches to
Enduring Challenges
The Acquisition Innovation Research Center (AIRC) was established in September 2020 by the Department of Defense (DoD) to infuse innovation and alternative disciplines from academia to better respond to rapidly changing threats and technological advances.
As an applied academic research arm of DoD, AIRC brings a robust and scalable capability that reduces the impedance to innovate policies, practices, and procedures, providing better and more rapid responses to warfighter and operator needs.
AIRC focuses on:
- Researching acquisition policies and practices and applying new disciplines, technologies, and analytical capabilities to enhance strategic decision making.
- Developing pilots and experiments to prototype, test, and demonstrate new acquisition practices for transition to broader use.
- Enhancing education and training efforts to improve the defense acquisition executives and workforce.
- Cultivating emerging best practices that span across research, engineering, acquisition, and sustainment.
- Broadening its network of experts and partners across academia, government, and industry.
- Conducting projects that bring “out of the box” thinking to address the most critical challenges facing the DoD.
Working with AIRC and its
Collaboration Network
AIRC engages the talents of faculty, students, researchers, and subject-matter experts from its network of collaborative universities to provide stakeholders across the extended DoD Acquisition Enterprise, thought leaders from across the nation, and researchers across academia with innovative academic analysis and policy alternatives for improved defense acquisition outcomes powered by evidence-based, data-driven decision making.
Incubate
Ideate
Respond
Connect
Incubate
Selected Sponsors and Offices within the DoD define priority themes (e.g., Acquisition and T&E), and the research community responds with innovative ideas to explore within these priority themes.
Ideate
AIRC provides a platform for the community of researchers to propose innovative ideas for experiments and pilots for the relevant sponsors and offices to consider.
Respond
AIRC provides a resource to the Sponsors and Offices within the DoD to explore innovative approaches to specific priorities.
Connect
AIRC connects a network of the top academic and research faculty across its university collaborators to address emergent questions. The AIRC's flexible contracting approach allows for a Sponsor to quickly bring together an expert or group of experts from across the collaborator universities for focused panels, workshops, studies, or other engagements.
If you intend to fund research with the AIRC or would like to engage with an AIRC faculty member about a research project, please submit your information, as well as a short description of the research. We will contact you with specific instructions.
Funding the AIRC is a simple process, involving a short statement of work and researcher proposal. We will assist with the Statement of Work and Proposal as needed.
If you have a research idea, or potential government sponsor, please submit your information, as well as a short description of the research. We will contact you with specific instructions.
Funding the AIRC is a simple process, involving a short statement of work and researcher proposal. We will assist with the Statement of Work and Proposal as needed.
CONTRACTING WITH US:
UARC’s receive sole source funding (UARC contracts) from DoD under the authority of 10 U.S.C. Section 2304(c)(3)(B) in order to establish or maintain an essential engineering, research, and/or development capability. The UARC DoD primary sponsors are OUSD(R&E) and U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Picatinny Arsenal.
Cultivating and Leveraging a Network of Experts and Researchers
