The agency will fund projects aimed at speeding up synthetic biology, and creating new kinds of materials.
Yesterday morning, at the Fifth International Meeting on Synthetic Biology at Stanford University, a representative from the DARPA announced a new program called Living Foundries that will invest in and develop synthetic biology projects.
The goal, according to the agency's program manager Alicia Jackson, is to revolutionize materials science, and to foster projects that will enable the creation and manufacture of materials that are not possible to make today, such as more efficient solar and electronic materials. To do so, she said, DARPA will get into synthetic biology "in a big way." The goal is to establish new manufacturing capabilities in the United States.
Be careful what you wish for. But if we don't do it, others surely will. To read the rest of the article, click here.