15
Crosscutting Recommendations
The research strategy within the Army Research Office (ARO) Engineering Sciences Directorate (ESD) seems to be principally a bottom-up one, where the program managers (PMs) have primary discretion and authority regarding project selection and funding decisions. The PMs are all well qualified for their positions. The directorate strategy is to pose bold scientific questions; to seek collaborations; to engage with the Army laboratories for transitioning the research; to seek out high-risk, high-reward opportunities; to venture into new areas with long-term impact on enhancing Army capabilities; and to hire and retain excellent workforce. All of these items are meritorious. This strategy includes “casting a wide net,” even though funding levels are relatively small compared to peer organizations such as the Department of Energy (DOE), National Science Foundation (NSF), Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), Office of Naval Research (ONR), and so on. By having the PMs follow both directorate program planning and respective division strategy transitions to the Army could be enhanced. Because the directorate investment is relatively small and the opportunities in engineering sciences are large, focusing the research topics could possibly result in more benefit to the Army through transitions without loss of scientific excellence.
ESD Crosscutting Recommendation 1: The Army Research Office (ARO) program managers (PMs) should be encouraged to prioritize directorate and division strategy with respect to focusing project selection by further improving the connection of scientific discovery to Army transitions.
In general, the scientific quality of the work funded is of sufficiently high quality and is not of concern. In general, the PM appears to have significant autonomy in adjusting the focus areas of the research portfolio—it is the PM who can target potential PIs, manage the proposal review process, assemble proposal review scores, and make final recommendations as to prioritization of funded projects. The individual PM-centric approach for managing division portfolios raised questions related to transparency and methodology of proposal solicitation, proposal review and final assessment, and proposal selection for risk balancing and strategic alignment. This level of PM independence could impede ARO’s top-down distillation of Army needs into research thrusts for funding.
In addition to technical diversification or collaboration between projects, some portfolios would also benefit from increased diversity of research PIs to include early-career PIs and less long-term continued funding provided to late-career PIs.
ESD Crosscutting Recommendation 2: The Army Research Office (ARO) management should establish processes that help to ensure that proposed research is unique, pioneering, and/or novel. ARO management should place emphasis on envisioning and conducting workshops or other events that reach beyond the current cadre of ARO PMs and funded principal investigators (PIs) to explore fields broadly and to define new directions and new, early-career, and more diverse participants for the programs.
Overall, the ESD is conducting very high-quality research. The programs are driven, in an entrepreneurial manner, by well-qualified individual PMs who can take their programs in different directions without significant bureaucracy. However, these individual PMs need strategic positioning and appropriate incentives to coherently drive their programs for maximum transitions to the Army. Overall, the quality of programs reviewed was high, but there were limited initiatives aimed at new research directions and pursuing high-risk, high-reward projects that could lead to discovery and inventions of greater scientific significance.
ESD Crosscutting Recommendation 3: The Army Research Office (ARO) should expand on new research directions and high-risk, high-reward projects that could lead to discovery and inventions of greater scientific significance.
In a number of divisions, areas of missed opportunity for interdivision collaboration and an apparent stovepipe of projects under each PM were identified. There were certainly examples where this is not the case, but in an agile and responsive research portfolio, more interdisciplinary projects are expected. The MURI projects provide a good example of interdisciplinary projects, yet these are not readily accessible to most projects within a PM’s portfolio. Efforts to promote improved collaboration across ARO divisions and scientific disciplines would be beneficial.
ESD Crosscutting Recommendation 4: The Army Research Office (ARO) management should develop mechanisms that facilitate interactions within the ARO directorates and divisions, including for example the Mechanical Sciences and Electronics Divisions and the Materials Science, Chemical Sciences, and Physics Divisions. ARO should focus these interactions to be on funding projects with aligned priorities within the programs, be they within the same division or across divisions of different directorates.
