¶ Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
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The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is an American government military research and development agency within the United States Department of Defense (DoD).
¶ History
One of DARPA's first employees was Lawrence Preston Gise, grandfather of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.[1][2]
DARPA funded the creation of the internet by a team led by Vint Cerf. A 12-year-old Steve Kirsch snuck in to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he interacted with Cerf and other participants in the project.[3] He was soon asked by the team to write a program to send and receive e-mails on the Sigma 7, which would soon become the first computer to send an electronic message over the ARPANET in October 1969.[4] Charles Klein, one of the other researchers on the project, would later describe Kirsch by the nickname “Stevie” while recounting his contributions. During his junior high and high school years, Kirsch also worked on operating systems for the group and wrote a status monitoring program, so users could tell who else was on the system.
Michael Callahan was recruited in 2004 by DARPA to run its $260M Accelerated Manufacture of Pharmaceuticals program dealing with pandemics and microbial resistance.[5] He ran the program from 2005-2012. While at DARPA, he launched the Accelerated Manufacture of Pharmaceuticals (AMP) program, for which he received the 2010 DARPA Achievement Award, and which generated emergency use good manufacturing practice pH1N1 vaccines, and Nicotinia-expressed monoclonals such as ZMapp. Also while at DARPA, he launched Prophecy, an international physician “early alert” network which delivers 24/7 emergency consultation, reagents and therapeutics for catastrophic infectious disease outbreaks.
In the summer of 2009, DARPA solicited proposals for vaccine options made from plants in preparation for "outbreaks of infectious disease and bioterrorist acts." The Texas Plant-Expressed Vaccine Consortium submitted a proposal.[6] This led to the February 2010 launch of Project GreenVax, "a biotherapeutic manufacturing initiative" intended to "dramatically increase the nation’s capability to produce vaccines for infectious diseases" using tobacco plants to grow vaccines against influenza and other diseases. DARPA provided $40 million in funding.[7]
In 2018, DARPA granted AbCellera US$30.6 million to lead one of four research groups aimed at developing antibody treatments for pandemics.[8][9][10]
¶ Organization
DARPA is a member of the Global Funders Consortium for Universal Influenza Vaccine Development.[11]
DARPA is a donor to the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS).[12]
¶ Personnel
| Name | Position | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Lawrence Preston Gise | Early employee | Grandfather of Jeff Bezos[1:1][2:1] |
| Michael Callahan | Director of Biodefense Medical Countermeasures[13] | United States Agency for International Development, United Therapeutics, Massachusetts General Hospital, Zika Foundation |
| Neil Jacobstein | Technical consultant | Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI)[14] |
| James Giordano | Neuroethics, Legal and Social Issues (NELSI) Advisory Panel member[15] | Georgetown University |
¶ External links
Umoh, R. (2017, November 17). Jeff Bezos says he learned this critical business skill while visiting his grandfather as a child. CNBC. http://archive.today/2023.03.17-061212/https://arthritis.ca/about-us/partners/community/nova-scotia-en/pfizer ↩︎ ↩︎
O’Mara, M. (2018, October 26). Opinion | Silicon Valley Can’t Escape the Business of War. The New York Times. http://archive.today/2023.02.12-045004/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/opinion/amazon-bezos-pentagon-hq2.html ↩︎ ↩︎
Perry, T. S. (2000, August 1). Steve Kirsch. IEEE Spectrum. https://web.archive.org/web/20230313165006/https://spectrum.ieee.org/steve-kirsch ↩︎
45 years ago: First message sent over the Internet. (2014, October 29). CBS News. https://web.archive.org/web/20230313174206/https://www.cbsnews.com/news/first-message-sent-over-the-internet-45-years-ago/ ↩︎
Michael Callahan. Vaccine & Immunotherapy Center. Retrieved March 2, 2023, from https://web.archive.org/web/20230302083941/https://advancingcures.org/vic-management-michael-callahan/ ↩︎
Ackerman, T. (2010, February 24). Vaccine project someday could bring 4,000 jobs to Texas. Chron; The Houston Chronicle. http://archive.today/2023.08.28-185307/https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/vaccine-project-someday-could-bring-4-000-jobs-to-1609360.php ↩︎
White, J. A. (2010, February 24). What Tobacco Plants Have to Do With Swine-Flu Vaccine. Wall Street Journal. http://archive.today/2023.08.28-184402/https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/BL-HEB-30365 ↩︎
Silcoff, S. (2020, December 11). A Canadian biotech giant is born: AbCellera stock triples in debut, company now worth US$15-billion. The Globe and Mail. http://archive.today/2020.12.11-200257/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-abcelleras-ipo-makes-huge-splash-as-stock-price-triples-in-early/ ↩︎
Weirich, A. (2020, January 28). AbCellera is mobilizing a response to the novel coronavirus outbreak as part of its DARPA P3 program. AbCellera. http://archive.today/2020.03.09-012532/https://www.abcellera.com/news/2020-01-abcellera-mobilizing-a-response-to-novel-coronavirus ↩︎
Heyries, K. (2018, March 13). AbCellera Awarded Multi-Year Contract to Lead the Development of a Rapid Response Platform Against Pandemic Viral Threats. AbCellera. http://archive.today/2022.05.04-201622/https://www.abcellera.com/news/18-03-abcellera-awarded-multi-year-contract-to-lead-the-development-of-rapid-response-platform ↩︎
About. Global Funders Consortium. Retrieved January 11, 2023, from https://web.archive.org/web/20230111181204/https://unifluvac.org/about/ ↩︎
Simonyi, C., & Goddard, P. (2012). Report for the Academic Year 2011-2012. Institute for Advanced Study. https://web.archive.org/web/20220803044536/https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/documents/publications/IAS_AnnualReport.pdf ↩︎
Michael Callahan MD DTMH (UK) MSPH. LinkedIn. Retrieved September 21, 2023, from http://archive.today/2023.09.21-170302/https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-callahan-md-dtmh-uk-msph-3317b890/ ↩︎
Advisors. Singularity Institute. Retrieved February 11, 2010, from https://web.archive.org/web/20100211210711/http://singinst.org/aboutus/advisors ↩︎
James Giordano. Georgetown University School of Continuing Studies. Retrieved September 30, 2020, from https://web.archive.org/web/20200930010356/https://scs.georgetown.edu/faculty/4095419/james-giordano ↩︎