2021 Class of LUCI Fellows

The Basic Research Office at OUSD (R&E) is pleased to announce the 2021 class of Laboratory-University Collaboration (LUCI) Fellows. LUCI fellows are highly accomplished 6.1 researchers in the DoD laboratories that wish to partner with top tier DoD-funded academic researchers.

This program is very competitive. The review process involved Program Officers of the three services, DARPA, OSD personnel (including from the Technical and Assistant Directors for modernization priorities) and external technical experts drawn from several USG organizations). Out of 105 submissions, 22 applicants were selected for an interview phase, from which the following 10 Fellows have been selected:

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While many will be inevitably disappointed with this outcome, we wish to emphasize that all proposed research projects that reached the interview phase were of high quality, and the final selection was made with considerable care and thoughtful discussions. The number of awards is limited by the available budget, and many projects deserve a second look in the next call for the FY21 class. To that effect, we will endeavor to provide feedback to all interviewed, in addition to the ones already provided to white paper submitters.

In closing, we are gratified to see an S&T workforce that can excel in basic research, clearly formulate highly innovative research directions, and is able to access the most advanced scientific work by collaborating with US Academia via this LUCI program. To the winners of this FY21 selection, congratulations, and we are looking forward to hearing more, in future events, about the great progress you are making in advancing the scientific state-of-the-art and supporting the DoD mission.