The Department of Defense today announced $18 million in grants to 11 university-based faculty teams under its Minerva Research Initiative, which supports basic research in social and behavioral sciences on topics of particular relevance to U.S. national security.
"We live in a dynamic world, and many of the challenges we face are social or have social elements to them," said Dr. David Montgomery, director of social science in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (R&E). "Leveraging the strengths of the nation's academic research institutions helps DoD define sources of present and future conflicts, with an eye toward better understanding the social and political trajectories of key regions of the world."
Through its network of faculty investigators, the Minerva Research Initiative builds strong connections to the social science community to help the Department better understand and prepare for future challenges, guided by priorities established in the National Defense Strategy.
The 11 university awardees were selected from approximately 130 applicants in six categories, using a merit competition that evaluated proposals for their potential to make foundational contributions to basic social science and alignment with the National Defense Strategy. Research proposals were peer-reviewed and selected for scientific merit, relevance, and potential impact in conference between R&E and the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.
The selected projects include:
- Deterrence in Space—Integrated or Entangled? A Wargaming Approach to Multidomain Strategy
Topic Area: Deterrence in the future operating environment
Principal Investigator: Mariel Borowitz, Georgia Institute of Technology
- Advancing Social Science Research on Demographic Shifts, Climate Change, and Political and Social Stability in Sub-Saharan Africa
Topic Area: Socio-economic vulnerability to climate change
Principal Investigator: Arun Agrawal, University of Michigan
- Social Network Websites, Kremlin Propaganda, and Internet Usage Patterns Among Russians
Topic Area: Russian speakers in online spaces
Principal Investigator: Golfo Alexopoulos, University of South Florida
- The Climate-Food-Urbanization Nexus and the Precursors of Instability in Africa
Topic Area: Socio-economic vulnerability to climate change
Principal Investigator: Kathy Baylis, University of California Santa Barbara
- Future Fish Wars: Chasing Ocean Ecosystem Wealth
Topic Area: Socio-economic vulnerability to climate change
Principal Investigator: James Watson, Oregon State University
- Integrated Deterrence: Episodic Analysis
Topic Area: Deterrence in the future operating environment
Principal Investigator: Eli Berman, University of California, San Diego
- Resurgent Powers, Nontraditional Threats, and Emerging Technologies: Deterrence in a Multi-level Network Framework
Topic Area: Deterrence in the future operating environment
Principal Investigator: Brandon Kinne, University of California, Davis
- Cross-cultural Multilevel Examination of Power and Influence
Topic Area: Power and influence in the era of strategic competition
Principal Investigator: Jasmin Cloutier, University of Delaware
- Identifying and Measuring User and Platform Vulnerabilities to Strategic Information Operations
Topic Area: Power and influence in the era of strategic competition
Principal Investigator: Brian Ekdale, University of Iowa
- Food Fights: War Narratives and Identity Reproduction in Evolving Conflicts
Topic Area: Power and influence in the era of strategic competition
Principal Investigator: Samir Kassab, East Carolina University
- Semantic Foundations and Formal Methods for Evolutionary System-of-System Architectures
Topic Area: Management and information in the defense environment
Principal Investigator: Mark Austin, University of Maryland
The Minerva Research Initiative is jointly administered by the Basic Research Office in R&E and the Strategy and Force Development Office in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, in partnership with the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Office of Naval Research.
