Biological Control

The summary for the Biological Control grant is detailed below. This summary states who is eligible for the grant, how much grant money will be awarded, current and past deadlines, Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) numbers, and a sampling of similar government grants. Verify the accuracy of the data FederalGrants.com provides by visiting the webpage noted in the Link to Full Announcement section or by contacting the appropriate person listed as the Grant Announcement Contact. If any section is incomplete, please visit the website for the DARPA Biological Technologies Office, which is the U.S. government agency offering this grant.

Biological Control: The objective of the DARPA Biological Control program is to build new capabilities for the
control of biological systems across scales — from nanometers to centimeters, seconds to weeks,
and biomolecules to populations of organisms — using embedded controllers made of biological
parts to program system-level behavior. This program will apply and advance existing control
theory to design and implement generalizable biological control strategies analogous to
conventional control engineering, for example, for mechanical and electrical systems. The
resulting advances in fundamental understanding and capabilities will create new opportunities
for engineering biology.

Specifically, the Biological Control program will demonstrate tools to rationally design and
implement multiscale, closed-loop control of biological systems, through the development of
biological controllers, testbeds to evaluate control of system-level behavior, and theory and
models to predict and design effective control strategies. The resulting capabilities will be
inherently generalizable to a variety of biological systems. Successful teams will integrate and apply these capabilities to demonstrate a practical proof-of-principle biological solution to a proposer-defined application relevant to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD).