AIRC Innovation Projects
Call for Academic Research Proposals
The 2024-2025 cycle has closed but is anticipated to be a cyclical opportunity. Submissions will tentatively reopen ~March 3, 2025.
Innovation Projects supports AIRC’s mission to:
Enable an innovative, improved defense acquisition system
Apply fresh new insights from across Academia to the DoD
Improve acquisition outcomes
As the national security landscape continues to evolve, there is a critical need to support the Defense acquisition mission with immediate impact. AIRC Innovation Projects support this mission by addressing ways to improve defense acquisition and sustainment policies, practices, and processes. These projects will provide support to university research teams solving problems important to DoD’s Acquisition and Sustainment functional communities, including but not limited to program management, cost estimating, financial management, contracting, auditing, supply-chain and industrial-base management, engineering, technical management, test and evaluation, sustainment, and lifecycle logistics.
The goal of AIRC Innovation Projects is to broaden and improve traditional approaches and tradecraft in areas important to national defense by leveraging students and faculty to introduce new ideas and capabilities into DoD environments.
2024-2025 Innovation Projects Cycle
4 Universities
5 Projects
$500,000+ awarded
Project: Options for Strengthening the Use of Defense Production Act (DPA) Title VII in the Department of Defense
Why are you excited to receive this award?
“This award provides the Baroni Center with a useful opportunity to explore underutilized elements of Title VII of the Defense Production Act (DPA). Understanding how Title VII’s authorities could and should be used marks an important first step toward better harnessing the DPA to support the mobilization and preparedness goals of the United States, as well as to foster stronger collaboration between industry and government. The Baroni Center is also intrigued by historical use cases in which boards of industrial executives were assembled for government service, as these examples might provide clues on prospective uses today.”
Olivia Letts
George Mason University
Jerry McGinn
Executive Director, Center for Government Contracting, George Mason University
Enabling Digital Rights Management (DRM) of Intellectual Property Licenses for the Department of Defense
Why are you excited to receive this award?
“This award, to explore the potential application of Commercial Digital Rights Management in the context of DOD’s Management of Intellectual Property, Software, and Data Rights Licensing, is critical to DOD’s ability to stay current with technological change and practice. The adoption of commercial best practices, standards, and technologies which address modern challenges in intellectual property is crucial to maintaining pace with the speed of technological change. The Baroni Center is honored to continue to support DOD’s efforts to research, analyze, and adopt industry best practices, standards, and solutions.”
Lloyd Everhart
George Mason University
Benjamin McMartin
Senior Fellow, Center for Government Contracting, George Mason University
Project: Designing a Functional Information Retrieval System for Dynamic Organizational Use
What drew you to your research project?
“This project specifically provides me with a new opportunity to complete a full product pipeline, from initial research and conceptual design to implementation with a published user interface.”
Autumn Toney
PhD Candidate, Georgetown University
Lisa Singh
Professor and Chair of Department of Computer Science, Georgetown University
Project: AI-based DPCAP FAR/DFARS Change Support Tool
Why are you excited to receive this award?
“As an applied researcher I like working with clients. Even though there is a lot of potential for application of AI research to solve problems there are also complications (security, compliance, ethics, quality) to work through to ensure proper deployment.”
Brian Mayer
PhD Candidate, Virginia Tech
Naren Ramakrishnan
Thomas L. Phillips Professor of Engineering Director, Sanghani Center for AI & Analytics Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech
Project: AI-based DPCAP FAR/DFARS Change Support Tool
What excites you about working on your research project this year?
“I usually don’t get to go back to projects so I’m excited to revisit my prior work and find ways to optimize and expand its capabilities. This also means some value was seen in it which is awesome to see I made some meaningful impact.”
Josh Gorman
'24, Stevens Institute of Technology
Jose Ramirez-Marquez
Associate Professor and Division Director of Enterprise Science and Engineering, Stevens Institute of Technology
2024-2025 Innovation Project Guidelines
The 2025-2026 cycle will open tentatively on March 3, 2025.
Keep up with the latest updates by following AIRC on LinkedIn.
Improving policies, decision-making, and operations
• Incentives and Culture
• Financial Management
• Contract Management
• Requirements Management
• Jointness, Interoperability, Integration
• Intellectual Property
• Policy Test Labs
Improving acquisition and sustainment practices in specific disciplines, tools, tradecraft, and functions
• Innovation and Transition
• Model-based Portfolio Tools
• T&E
• Sustainment Transformations
Digital transformation activities and enablers to improve acquisition and sustainment
• Digital Engineering
• Digital Ecosystem
• Sustainment Data Analytics
- AIRC Innovation Project awards will only be given to universities with proposals whose participating faculty, students, and researchers are “U.S. Persons” (defined in 22 CFR 120.62).
- Proposals may be accepted by, and Innovation Project subcontracts awarded to any accredited universities in the U.S.
- Undergraduate and graduate students, along with supporting faculty and research staff, may participate.
Teams may include a mix of undergraduate and/or graduate students, along with supporting faculty and research staff. Each team is highly encouraged to involve multiple disciplines – in both their solution as well as their team makeup. Joint proposals from multiple universities are also allowed if not encouraged.
AIRC requires a short proposal from universities for each team, with distinct midpoint and final deliverables. There are no restrictions on the number of topics and awards that can be made by a single university. All submission must be received no later than October 15, 2024.
AIRC Innovation Projects will start in the 2024 Fall Semester and must conclude with final reports submitted by February 14, 2025. AIRC’s funds awarded to the 2024 AIRC Innovation Projects expire on February 28, 2025.
Each AIRC Innovation Project subcontract will be issued by Stevens Institute of Technology (SIT) as a Firm Fixed Price contract (not a grant) to a university, for a specific project and a single team. A Statement of Work will describe high level project objectives and team deliverables. The proposed funding for each project team will have a ceiling of $10K for non-SERC partnership universities and up to $250,000 for SERC/AIRC Partnership Universities (Collaborators – sercuarc.org). Due to limitations on available funding, larger projects may have reduced chances of funding. Direct labor charges will be allowed subject to university policy.
University business offices will promptly invoice SIT for Innovation Projects when the contract deliverables are satisfied.
The proposal includes a Project Description; this section is brief and should not exceed two (2) pages in length. Other Project information sheets and budget sections do not count against this limit but should remain brief. The proposal template gives guidance on other details such as faculty involvement; multidisciplinary capstone or other academic program involvement; educational techniques; laboratory, facility, and university resources; and relevant past performances.
Universities are requested to submit project proposals to AIRC as early as possible, but no later than October 15, 2024. Student team memberships do not have to be designated in the proposal or identified before Contract Awards. Proposals should be submitted using the proposal template below. Proposals should be submitted using the proposal submission link below and on the AIRC proposal template. Documents and attachments must be submitted in MS Office applications or PDF formats using the template below.
Proposals will be evaluated based on their innovation, strategic impact to the DoD and contribution to the expansion of the AIRC network.
2023-2024 Innovation Capstone Data
8 Universities
8 DoD Sponsors
U.S. Navy Little Creek VA
U.S. Army Ft. Liberty NC
Special Operations Support Activity
US Army
AIRC/OSD
OSD, NSA, DOT&E
33 Projects
100+ Students
Project: Disaster Resilience
If you could continue your research, what would be your next step?
“I want to calculate the transportation times next. What would the transportation delay be if there was flooding before and after the research solution has been applied?”
Anam Bayazid
'24, Stevens Institute of Technology
Jose Ramirez-Marquez
Associate Professor and Division Director of Enterprise Science and Engineering, Stevens Institute of Technology
Project: Disaster Resilience
What drew you to your research project?
“I liked the opportunity to work with modeling as well as working with something that is a very apparent problem in Hoboken. It also has environmental ties which I take interest in.”
Regina DeMaio
'24, Stevens Institute of Technology
Jose Ramirez-Marquez
Associate Professor and Division Director of Enterprise Science and Engineering, Stevens Institute of Technology
Project: Everything Tablet
How was this project different from other projects?
“We have to consider the sponsor’s vision with this product because it has the potential to be deployed into the real world. Without their guidance, we wouldn’t be able to gauge how successfully it will be adopted within their workforce.”
