ONR Global is interested in promising concepts to achieve revolutionary capability advances with both military and commercial value in the multidisciplinary technology challenge areas described below. Specifically excluded are approaches that primarily result in evolutionary improvements to the existing state of practice, or are already funded by existing research programs.

ONR Global recognizes that international scientists and engineers conduct creative and novel research. This Global-X Challenge provides an opportunity for these international researchers to collaborate, generate revolutionary ideas and demonstrate these ideas will succeed. ONR Global invites outstanding international researchers to form multi-national, multidisciplinary teams to address one or more of these capability challenges. ONR Global will use existing online collaboration tools to help researchers to connect, collaborate and form teams. ONR Global will provide more information about collaboration forums during the Kick-off Webinar. Individual researchers may participate on more than one team. Teams are responsible for establishing nondisclosure agreements among team members, if necessary. All ONR Global and U.S. Federal employees are already covered by Federal laws requiring the protection of trade secrets and proprietary information.

Researchers from academia and industry may participate. ONR Global expects, but does not require, that multi-national teams will consist of at least two research entities outside of the U.S., whether from academia, industry and/or the broad research community. Researchers from U.S. research entities may also participate, but are not required. As stated above, this Global-X Challenge is an opportunity specifically directed toward international researchers; therefore, ONR Global expects the majority of team members will be outside of the U.S. Each team shall designate a lead Principal Investigator (PI) whose research organization outside of the U.S. will submit the white paper or proposal, and that will distribute funding to co-PIs and other subrecipients. For a given project team, one award is made to the PI’s institution. Only the PI’s institution will be the prime awardee, and that institution is responsible for all aspects of the grant, including conditions on the use of funds and other terms and conditions of the grant.

Teams must submit white papers describing their concept and approach by 23:59 EDT on 25 May 2020. ONR Global will evaluate submitted white papers and will invite teams with the most promising and revolutionary concepts, on or before 5 June 2020, to submit a grant proposal. Full proposals are due by 23:59 EDT on 13 July 2020.

Challenge Problem Statements:

• Tailored Material and Manufacturing
• Multifunctional Maritime Films for Persistent and Survivable Platforms and Warfighters
• Object Detection and Identification in any Medium (Air, Water, Sand/Earth)

Additional information, including the BAA, can be found on grants.gov.