The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Information Innovation Office (I2O) hosted Demo Day 2014 to highlight DARPA’s ongoing contributions to preserving and expanding Information Technology superiority on May 21. The Pentagon event showcased the span of DARPA projects designed to change how the nation addresses growing national security challenges posed by the Information Revolution and by the increasing global availability of sophisticated information technologies.  Some of the projects on display were:

• DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge (CGC): CGC, to be launched this summer, will be the first-ever tournament for testing fully automatic network defense systems. The competition’s goal is to vastly improve the speed, scale and effectiveness of IT security against escalating cyber threats.
• High-Assurance Cyber Military Systems (HACMS): HACMS seeks to protect networked, embedded IT systems from cyberattack by creating semi-automated systems that build software according to formal methods and check that the created code is secure and works as intended.
• Big Mechanism: Big Mechanism aims to leapfrog state-of-the-art big-data analytics by developing automated technologies to help explain the causes and effects that drive complicated systems. The program plans to focus its initial efforts on research relating to cancer pathways.
• Memex: Memex seeks to develop the next generation of search technologies and revolutionize the discovery, organization and presentation of public-domain search results. Initially, DARPA intends to develop Memex to address a key DoD mission: fighting human trafficking.
• Broad Operational Language Translation (BOLT): BOLT seeks to create new techniques for automated translation and linguistic analysis that can be applied to informal text and speech common in online and in-person communication.

You can learn more about all of the programs showcased at the DEMO Day here and read the full Press Release here.