US Department of Defense funds high-risk innovative materials research: www.grants.gov

The practicality of being able to build materials on the battlefield with a discreet set of building blocks would have other beneficial applications, such as planned journeys to Mars—by both government and the private sector—in which reducing payloads will be critical to success. DoD basic research programs are funding efforts at Vanderbilt University to develop and test new composite materials that provide improved blast and projectile impact resistance in protective armor panels; University of Pittsburgh to enable prosthetic limbs to gain the feeling of touch through an array of microelectrodes; and SRI International, where researchers have developed an oral tablet that binds ions of ingested radioactive materials as a possible countermeasure against terror attacks, to name just a very few. DoD basic research funding is awarded to institutions in all 50 states through such programs as the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship support to university faculty and staff scientists to conduct research important to national security; Multidisciplinary University Research initiatives, which support research teams to address S&T problems that span disciplines; Historically Black Colleges and Universities/Minority Serving Institutions to conduct research and educate scientists and engineers in areas important to national defense; Future Directions Workshops, which connect leading scientists and engineers from academia, national laboratories, and industry to discuss scientific areas of rapid progress and create a roadmap to capitalize on the opportunities created by those advances; and I-Corps@DoD, a pilot program in partnership with NSF to provide entrepreneurship training and mentorship.