Jane Edwards
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has awarded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology a potential 18-month, $8.1 million contract modification to provide support for the second phase of DARPA’s Living Foundries: 1000 Molecules program.
The cost-reimbursement modification exercises the first option on a previously awarded contract and brings the total contract value to $19.3 million, the Defense Department said Tuesday.
The Living Foundries program seeks to create a biology-based manufacturing platform that works to provide new materials and capabilities for DoD and the engineering biology community through two components – Â Living Foundries: Advanced Tools and Capabilities for Generalizable Platforms and Living Foundries: 1000 Molecules.
The Living Foundries: 1000 Molecules component aims to leverage the tools created under the program’s ATCG portion in order to develop a prototyping and design infrastructure designed to produce 1,000 new molecules for use by DoD.
MIT will perform work in Massachusetts, Illinois and California through March 2018.
DARPA will obligate $7.1 million from its fiscal 2016 research, development, test and evaluation funds at the time of award, according to DoD.
