Class of 2025 Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship (VBFF)

Background

Before World War I, Dr. Vannevar Bush (1890-1974) was a professor and Dean of Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and founded a large defense and electronics company. He was a forward-thinking policymaker who, during World War II, went on to serve as the director of the U.S. Defense Department’s Office of Scientific Research and Development, coordinating the work of thousands of scientists in the service of ending the war. In his 1945 report to the President of the United States, Science, “The Endless Frontier”, Bush called for an expansion of government support for science, and he pressed for the creation of the National Science Foundation (NSF). Dr. Bush was concerned about how the scientific research supported by the Department of Defense (DoD) during WWII could be sustained with a focus on peacetime goals. He believed that basic research was “the pacemaker of technological progress”. “New products and new processes do not appear full-grown”, Bush wrote. “They are founded on new principles and new conceptions, which in turn are painstakingly developed by research in the purest realms of science”.

Dr. Bush’s life work embodies the spirit of this research program, formerly known as the National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellowship (NSSEFF). Therefore, in his in his honor, the name was changed to the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship (VBFF) program (https://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/955536/dod-debuts-vannevar-bush-faculty-fellowship).

Research Objectives

The VBFF program is sponsored by the Basic Research Office, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (USD (R&E)). VBFF supports innovative basic research within academia, as well as opportunities intended to develop the next generation of scientists and engineers for the defense workforce.

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) manages the VBFF program for USD (R&E). To accomplish this task, ONR is soliciting proposals for the VBFF program through this FOA. This FOA seeks distinguished researchers for the purpose of conducting innovative basic research in areas of interest to the DoD and fostering long-term relationships between the VBFF Fellows and the DoD.