Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 Directors' Research Initiative (DRI)

This Director’s Research Initiative NOFO will fund topics that are of interest to the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, as well as areas of interest to the United States Space Force. The theme for this initiative is Energy for Agility. Discovery science is needed today to achieve the energy resources required for the future integrated employment of Air and Space Forces, for power generation and optimization, and resilience to exposure.

In the coming decades, we are expecting to witness groundbreaking innovations in energy generation (in traditional methods, nuclear methods, and alternative methods of fuel and power), mobile energy storage, and power distribution that will change the way we think about energy for our Air and Space systems.

Regardless of the selection of power generation and power requirements of a system, power system engineering should push beyond reliance on electrical engineering power conditioning concepts, and applied mathematical methods are required to create foundational competency to optimize power efficiency that take into account system activities with variable durations, purposes, and environments. A rigorous coupling between kinetics, mechanics, and electrochemistry is required for the discovery of next generation batteries.

The convergence of major advancements in precision multi-material manufacturing, high fidelity functional material simulation, full linkages between component-operational-campaign level modeling, self-learning artificial intelligence, and advanced platform and propulsion designs will lead to revolutionary changes in system design processes and will enable rapid revolutionary system optimization. Increased activities in space will bring new exposures to radiation from, for example, space and mobile energy/power sources together with extreme environments. This creates new demands for protecting systems, such as needs for protective coatings or gear, radiation hardening, or multi-functionality of materials, electronics, and systems. Questions will likely arise around human exposure and protection, as agile energy may create localized extreme environments and novel exposure challenges. Advances in fundamental chemistry, fundamental biology, or computational sciences may prompt novel opportunities in the convergence of biosciences with unconventional energy concepts.

This opportunity seeks to fund proposals in four (4) specific topic areas. Please see the announcement for more information.