National Security Innovation Network
Abstract
NSIN executes the following programs and pilot activities, all of which are designed to enhance DoD’s access to technologists and entrepreneurs for the purposes of improving its talent pool, enable collaboration with universities and the early-stage venture community to develop novel concepts and solutions for end-user problems and requirements, and prototype and test new technologies to place them on the path to becoming programs of record or integrated with existing platforms. • Technology and National Security Fellowship: a national, one-year fellowship pilot that places STEM graduates into the immediate offices of policymakers in Congress and the Pentagon for the purposes of enhancing technical literacy and improving policy outcomes through an informed understanding of emerging and nascent technologies. • Hirethon: a national program that leverages NSIN’s existing and emerging network to pair exceptionally qualified candidates with DoD mission partners that plan to use direct or expedited hiring authorities to aid in job placement. • X-Force Fellowship: a summer fellowship experience for current students that embeds project-based teams of graduate and undergraduate students with DoD mission partners for the purposes of developing early-stage prototypes. Occurs annually from June-August. • Experts: a national program that identifies mid-career faculty experts with STEM, cyber, or entrepreneurial backgrounds and pairs them with DoD leadership for periodic consultations over the course of three months. • Tech Squad: a national pilot that provides remote, part-time, voluntary service opportunities that connect early-career STEM professionals with DoD units to solve tech-oriented national security problems collaboratively. • Hacking for Defense: a course taught at universities around the country that pairs DoD end-users with top university students for collaborative problem-solving over the course of an academic semester. Students work to develop a minimum viable product solution to improve the real-world problems of service members that can be adopted by the DoD end-users. • Hacks: a national program that provides early-stage concept development and proof of principle solutions to DoD mission partners through dedicated, virtual, multi-day hackathons operated in conjunction with top universities and start-ups throughout the country. • Bootcamp: a national program that provides crowd-sourced solutions for DoD mission partners by deploying faculty from top-tier research universities to bases and installations to facilitate early-stage concepts for technology and policy-based problems. • Maker: a national program that offers rapid prototyping for solutions drawn from accepted novel solution concepts from NSIN programming, allowing customers to turn ideas from the abstract and theoretical into practical and real prototypes. • Source: a national program that provides a virtual platform of crowd-sourced ideas that DoD leaders can interact with in the form of online innovation challenges. • Capstone: a national program that pairs prototyping development needs for DoD mission partners with extant engineering capstone courses from top-tier research universities throughout the country. Outputs include TRL-4 prototypes that can undergo testing and evaluation. • Starts: a national program that showcases high-TRL technologies to DoD mission partners for the purposes of enhanced tech scouting and improving technical capability gaps. Teams and companies with the technology that best meets a DoD mission partner’s needs are awarded initial prototyping or testing contracts. • Vector: a national program that provides an accelerated learning opportunity based on the business fundamentals of dual-use venture creation. The program seeks prior NSIN programming alumni to participate for the opportunity to compete for a follow-on contract. • Propel: a national program that partners with commercial incubators and accelerators to sponsor particularly promising technology and early-stage ventures into cohort-based customer discovery that improves DoD end-user validation. • Foundry (rebranded from Defense Innovation Accelerator (DIA)): a national program that identifies breakthrough DoD lab technology and leverages it to solve the real-world problems of DoD and commercial customers. Teams of entrepreneurs, working with DoD lab scientists and technologists, assess the market viability and the potential to commercialize DoD lab technologies. • Emerge Accelerator (rebranded from National Security Academic Accelerator (NSA2)): a national pilot that identifies extant university IP, matches it against DoD mission partner needs, and then commercializes the technology through entrepreneurial training, recruitment, and licensing agreements. Currently being executed at four pilot sites with the intent to expand it to an additional six (6) sites in FY 2022.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Project
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2023
- Source ID
- 845_0603950D8Z_3_0400_PB_2023
Related Documents
- Root: National Security Innovation Network
- Child Accomplishment: National Security Innovation Network (NSIN)