Cloning DARPA Successfully

The US government is successfully adopting Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to ensure success in advancing technology development. DARPA's success lies in its program managers with its program managers as each program manager, who is temporarily on leave from a permanent position in the academic or industrial research community is given tremendous autonomy to identify and fund relevant technologies in his or her own field that are relevant to specific military purposes. In 2002, the Department of Homeland Security formed Advanced Research Development Agency HS-ARPA which was replaced by I-ARPA. Congress directed the Department of Energy (DOE) to create ARPA-E and so far it has only a single program manager and no director. ARPA-E should use DARPA-DSRC as a model for an Energy Science Research Council (ESRC), which would bring together 20 to 30 of the country's leading scientists and engineers and 10 to 20 ARPA-E program managers for several weeks to brainstorm on future research areas in energy sciences.