Intelligence Community Wants Better Tech for COVID-19 and the Next Pandemic – Nextgov

U.S. pandemic researchers and responders were caught flat-footed by COVID-19, but the intelligence communitys lead research division wants to catch up and be ready for the next viral outbreak.

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, or IARPA, issued a broad agency announcement offering seedling funding for early-stage technology and methods that could revolutionize pandemic response. Specifically, the agency wants quick turnaround projects for COVID-19 research topics.

Successful technology solutions will require creative, multidisciplinary methods, paradigm changing thinking, and transformative approaches, the solicitation states. Preference will be given to research with the ability to not only provide rapid capability against the current COVID-19 pandemic, but also enhanced warning and response capacity for future similar events.

The current pandemic has highlighted capability gaps in five areas, according to the solicitation:

Proposals must explicitly address relevance of the technical approach to the current COVID-19 pandemic and extensibility to future pandemics, including a timeline for eventual implementation, the solicitation states. Proposals shall demonstrate that the proposed effort has the potential to make revolutionary, rather than incremental, improvements to current capabilities.

Officials said proposals that will only deliver evolutionary improvement to the existing state of practice will not be considered.

As with other research and development outfits, IARPA takes advantage of staged funding to limit risk in innovative investments. For this project, the program plans to use a two-phase approach. Phase A will last for a maximum of four months, during which teams will work on initial proofs of concept. After evaluations, select teams will be chosen to move on to Phase B, which, by the end, will result in demonstrations that could lead to future funding opportunities.

Phase B is broken into two parts: an initial three-month period, at the end of which teams will be required to present a midterm report to IARPA project managers. Based on those reports, IARPA officials will determine whether the project will continue for the remaining five months of Phase B.

In total, both phases together are expected to take no more than 12 months and cost less than $1 million.

This BAA solicits proposals for short-term, limited scope research in topic areas that are not addressed by emerging or ongoing IARPA programs or other published IARPA solicitations, the solicitation states. It is primarily, but not solely, intended for early stage research that may lead to larger, focused programs through a separate BAA in the future.

IARPA officials plan to make multiple awards in the first round.

The program office plans to use a set of vendors as technical consultants, including reviewing proposals and evaluating progress throughout the project. The program plans to tap Booz Allen Hamilton; Whitney, Bradley & Brown, Inc.; BRTRC Federal Solutions; Patriot Solutions Group; Airlin Technologies; Bluemont Technology and Research; Crimson Phoenix; Northwood Global Solutions; Onts & Quants, Inc.; Quantitative Scientific Solutions; SAIC; and Tarragon Solutions, according to the solicitation.

In an update posted Friday, IARPA pushed the window for submitting proposals to June 5 through 11:59 p.m. June 7.

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Intelligence Community Wants Better Tech for COVID-19 and the Next Pandemic - Nextgov