Established in 2006, the DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA) program aims to identify and engage rising academics in early-career research positions – particularly those without prior DARPA funding – and expose them to Department of Defense (DOD) needs and DARPA’s mission to create and prevent technological surprise. The YFA program provides high-impact funding to researchers at U.S. institutions early in their careers to advance innovative research enabling transformative DOD capabilities. The long-term goal of the YFA program is to build a pipeline for the next generation of academic scientists, engineers, and mathematicians who will focus a significant portion of their career on DOD and national security issues.