Intrinsic Market Resilience (IMR)

Solicitation ID: DARPA-PS-26-138

Agency: DARPA/IPTO

Eligibility Reasoning

FFRDCs: (1) FFRDCs must clearly demonstrate that the proposed work is not otherwise available from the private sector. (2) FFRDCs must provide a letter, on official letterhead from their sponsoring organization that, (a) cites the specific authority establishing their eligibility to propose to Government solicitations and compete with industry, and (b) certifies the FFRDC’s compliance with the associated FFRDC sponsor agreement’s terms and conditions. DARPA, under this solicitation, will not award separate contracts to FFRDCs as prime or subcontractors but will instead leverage their existing sponsors' agreements.

Note: This is an AI-generated summary...

Summary

The Intrinsic Market Resilience (IMR) program aims to develop methods to protect essential economic sectors from attacks that exploit the public interfaces of modern digital markets. The program's goal is to counter adversaries seeking to cause disruption, rather than just profit. The technical approach involves creating a prototype capability to automatically model market designs, identify hidden weaknesses, and recommend repairs. This will be achieved by using Large Language Models (LLMs) and other automation to translate informal market descriptions (e.g., regulatory filings) into formal, machine-analyzable models. Against these models, the program will formulate and assess "resilience conjectures"—mathematical statements about desirable market properties. If a conjecture is disproven, the system will generate a counterexample illustrating a specific weakness, which will then be used to refine the conjecture and recommend validated repairs. The program is divided into three Technical Areas (TAs): TA1 (Modeling and Analysis), TA2 (Resiliency and Repair), and TA3 (Test and Evaluation), which will independently validate the work of TA1 and TA2.

Overall Technical Areas

Probable LBNL Areas

Focus Areas

Potential LBNL PIs (Overall)

Note on PI Matching: These suggestions are generated through an AI-driven semantic analysis of LBNL staff profiles.

Name	Score	Organization
Eric Chagnon	0.77	CSA | AMCR | Mathematics · Large Language Model (LLM) Automation
Alan Sanstad	0.76	ETA | Energy Analysis | Energy Markets & Planning · Economic Market Modeling
Alexandre Bayen	0.75	ETA | Energy Analysis | Systems & Energy Tech Analysis · Complex Systems Analysis
Eric O'Shaughnessy	0.75	ETA | Energy Analysis | Energy Markets & Planning · Automated Market Repair Recommendation
Naïm Darghouth	0.74	ETA | Energy Analysis | Energy Markets & Planning · Formal Methods for Markets
Thomas Hendrickson	0.74	ETA | Energy Analysis | Systems & Energy Tech Analysis · Holistic Impact Analysis
Steven Hofmeyr	0.74	CSA | AMCR | Computer Science · State Space Explosion Mitigation
Myles Collins	0.73	ETA | Energy Analysis | Energy Markets & Planning · Resilience Conjecture Formulation
Koushik Sen	0.72	CSA | AMCR | Computer Science · Test and Evaluation Frameworks
Gregory Lemieux	0.72	EESA | CESD | Earth System Sciences · Machine-Analyzable Model Generation

Fundamental Research Exemption (FRE)

As of the date of publication of this solicitation, the Government expects that program goals as described herein may be met by proposed efforts for fundamental research and non-fundamental research. Some proposed research may present a high likelihood of disclosing performance characteristics technologies that are unique and critical to defense. Based on the anticipated type of proposer (e.g., university or industry) and the nature of the solicited work, the Government expects that some awards will include restrictions on the resultant research that will require the awardee to seek DARPA permission before publishing any information or results relative to the program.