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The Office of Naval Research's Materials for New Sensor Modalities program is interested in basic research aimed at drastic or fundamental alterations of a material’s response to stimuli.

The Office of Naval Research's Electrochemical Materials program is focused on developing a fundamental understanding of charge (electron and ion) storage, transport and transfer mechanisms, and applying that knowledge to inform the development of materials, materials architectures and devices that address Navy and Marine Corps application power and energy needs.

The Office of Naval Research's Corrosion Science and Corrosion Control Technologies program has a primary focus to create a science-based understanding of corrosion through damage evolution mechanisms, develop corrosion-informed materials concepts, and evolve surface protection and modification sciences.

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) sponsored a project at Virginia Tech University nearly 20 years ago that is now growing in influence across the world for measuring aerospace and aeronautical acoustics. Since noise reverberates against solid surfaces, such as the walls of a wind tunnel where acoustical testing takes place, collecting accurate sound data had been nearly impossible at the time. Researchers were also struggling to discern the sound of the wind tunnel’s air flow from the noise of the object traveling through it. After learning about some experiments on Kevlar as a wind screen, William Devenport, an engineering professor and director of Virginia Tech’s Stability Wind Tunnel, said he and a colleague wrote a proposal to then-ONR program officer Ron Joslin to try adding Kevlar to their wind tunnel walls. Devenport submitted the original grant proposal (N00014–04–1–04933) through the FY 2004 Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) for alterations to Virginia Tech’s existing Stability Wind Tunnel that would allow it to measure flow-induced noise of relevance to Navy applications.

Student engineering teams from Princeton, Washington College and the University of Alabama have won first place in their respective events at the “Promoting Electric Propulsion” (PEP) boat races, sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the American Society of Naval Engineers (ASNE). In just six years, this electric boat-building competition has grown from a single university to 34, with more than 200 students who took part in the five-mile races on Broad Bay in Virginia Beach. Dr. Steve Russell, program officer, Sea Warfare and Weapons department, said he launched the PEP competition with a colleague from ASNE, Dr. Leigh McCue, and Tim Cullis, Naval Sea Warfare Center Carderock, after seeing a public race by local hobbyists in the Chesapeake Bay.

The ONR 33 NEPTUNE Program is a two-year pilot program providing funding to five universities, the U.S. Naval Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School. Its goals are to help the Navy and Marine Corps discover ways to improve energy conservation, generate renewable energy and implement energy-efficient technologies—while giving active-duty military, military students and veterans the chance to immerse themselves in university-level research.

The Navy faces the complex task of efficiently managing diverse material streams, either generated as operational byproducts or at the end of their service life. The Office of Naval Research's Materials Treatment and Recovery program ensures their appropriate treatment and recovery.

The Office of Naval Research's Fuel Flexibility for Contingency Operations program comprises basic and applied research to support naval needs for operational energy resilience and sustained operations when conventional fuels are not abundantly available. This program seeks technological breakthroughs to enable the generation of synthetic fuels from abundant and logistically compatible resources.

The Office of Naval Research's Advanced Power and Energy for Undersea Applications program aims to develop component, subsystem and system technologies for advanced high-energy density and power density propulsion systems, and to enable increased endurance and reliability in an air-independent environment.

Naval assets, large and small, spend months to years at sea exposed to considerable biofouling pressures. The Office of Naval Research's Biofouling Control program sponsors research to develop antifouling/fouling release coatings and the mechanics underlying such materials.