The ARDA Exploratory Program (EP) requests Challenge and Seedling Workshop Proposals to address Challenge Problems for the fiscal year 2006.  The Advanced Research and Development Activity (ARDA) is a US Government organization whose mission is to sponsor high-risk, high-payoff research designed to advance basic research, leverage leading edge technology, and enable supporting data to solve critical intelligence problems.  The EP encourages novel approaches, non-traditional government contractors, and new cross-organizational teams to help solve Challenge Problems using collaborative workshops.

For 2006 the Exploratory Program invites proposals in the following
technical areas:

* Video Analysis

* Advanced Question and Answering

* Advanced Methods and Tools for Intelligence Analysis

* Computational Social Science/Social Informatics

* Advanced Information Assurance

* Next Generation Geospatial Analysis

For more information about these technical areas, please review the full Call for Proposals, which is available at the Regional Research Center’s web site: http://rrc.mitre.org/cfp06.shtml

“Challenge Problems” have two objectives: (1) to initiate revolutionary R&D addressing critical Intelligence Community needs and/or (2) to accelerate critical R&D to real solutions, prototypes or first proofs-of-principle.  Workshops that address Challenge Problems may be of two types: Challenge and Seedling (see below).  Workshops may support existing ARDA programs or explore new areas of research and possibly result in creation of new ARDA programs.  These workshops typically consist of eight to twenty or more domain experts, scientists and technologists, who assemble for multiple meetings to collaboratively address the identified challenge problem.  Results of these workshops typically include annotated data, technical papers describing new approaches, novel algorithms, prototype software, prototype systems, and definitive roadmaps forward for future research.

Note: Some problems are not well suited to the teaming Workshop format.  It is imperative that proposals address technical challenges whose solutions require a collaborative workshop environment.  It is also imperative that proposals are cognizant of, and build beyond, preceding core developments.

Challenge Workshops

Challenge Workshops address (1) revolutionary research critical to the IC and (2) accelerate development to produce real solutions, prototypes, first proofs-of-principle and demonstrations.  Challenge Workshops are 12-18 month ($1M to 1.5M) efforts, and usually support existing EP efforts.  The objective of these workshops is a tangible prototype, or first proof-of-principle.  They typically bring together moderate sized teams to develop, evaluate and integrate new and complementary approaches toward an ultimate goal of a prototype or demonstration.  Examples of Challenge workshops are diverse, and include knowledge management interoperability, analyst tools for text and video processing, quantum optics and physical devices, and systems.

Seedling Workshops

Seedling Workshops, by comparison, may explore new areas outside of the existing ARDA program areas and are funded at the $100K to $500K level for a 6 - 12 month period.  Seedling Workshops are short term, novel investigations that might result in future Challenge Workshops or new ARDA programs.  Like Challenge Workshops, Seedling Workshops may also result in development to produce real solutions, prototypes, first proofs-of-principle and demonstrations.

Please visit the ARDA Exploratory Program web site at http://rrc.mitre.org/ to learn more about the technical areas in which Workshop proposals are being sought, as well as submission procedures and schedules, and other related information.

Schedule for ARDA EP 2006 Call for Workshop Proposals:

- February, 2005: Call for Challenge/Seedling Workshop proposals issued

- 11 March 2005: Written proposals are due—follow the web-based submission instructions available at http://conferences.mitre.org/rrc2006/

- 1 April 2005: Written proposals selected for oral presentation

- 14 April 2005: Oral proposals are due—follow the web-based submission instructions for oral presentations available at http://conferences.mitre.org/rrc2006/

- 20-21 April 2005: Oral proposals presented (MITRE, McLean, VA)

- 1 May 2005: Notification of selected Workshops

- May 2005: Challenge and Seedling Workshop Proposal refinement with Government and RRCs (final tasking, membership, costing)

- 1 Oct 2005: Main workshop activities commence

- 31 Dec 2006: All workshop activities have completed