The Biological Technologies Office [BTO] of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency [DARPA] is sponsoring a Proposers Day for the potential proposer community in response to a Broad Agency Announcement [BAA] for the Neural Engineering System Design Program. The two day Proposers Day will include program overview and technical presentations, teaming sessions, and a poster/demo session where participants and Industry Group participates will be provided an opportunity to present their capabilities and research.

Proposers Day Objectives

Introduce the Neural Engineering System Design program vision and goals.
Facilitate interaction, collaboration, and teaming throughout the investigator and industry group communities.
Introduce the new NESD Industry Group and call for development, prototyping, fabrication, and clinical testing support.

The Proposers Day will be held on February 2–3, 2016 at the Westin Gateway Hotel, 801 N. Glebe Road, Arlington, VA 22203. Advance registration is required.

NESD Program Description

DARPA's Neural Engineering System Design Program [NESD] seeks to design, build, demonstrate, and validate in animal and human subjects a neural interface system capable of recording form more than one million neurons, stimulating more than one hundred thousand neuron, and performing continuous, simultaneous full-duplex (read and write) interaction with at least one thousand neurons in regions of the human sensory cortex. In addition to achieving substantial advances in scale of interface (independent channel count), proposed systems must also demonstrate simultaneous high-precision in neural activity detection, transduction, and encoding, with a single-neuron spike-train precision for each independent channel.

	Tuesday, February 2, 2016
	7:00 am – 8:00 am	Registration and Continental Breakfast CDE - F. Scott Fitzgerald Ballroom
	8:00 am – 8:15 am	Introduction to DARPA / BTO Justin Sanchez, PhD, Acting Deputy Director, DARPA/BTO
	8:15 am – 9:00 am	NESD Program Overview Phillip Alvelda, PhD, Program Manager, DARPA/BTO
	9:00 am – 9:15 am	Doing Business with DARPA Michael Mutty, DARPA/CMO
	9:15 am – 9:45 am	Regulatory Allison Kumar, PhD, FDA Kip Ludwig, PhD, Mayo Clinic
	9:45 am – 10:00 am	Break
	10:00 am – 11:00 am	Complete Neural Interface Systems Arto Nurmikko PhD & David Borton PhD, Brown University Serge Picaud, PhD, Institute de la vision
	11:00 am – 11:45 pm	Sensory Cortex Interfaces Brian Pasley, PhD, University of California, Berkeley Stephen Macknik, PhD, State University of New York Hamutal Slovin, PhD, Bar-Ilan University
	12:00 pm – 1:00 pm	Working Lunch / Industry Consortium Overview and Teaming Guidance Dr. Phillip Alvelda - DARPA/BTO
	1:00 pm – 3:00 pm	Scalable Neural Transducers Ken Shepard, PhD, Columbia University Matt Angle, PhD, Paradromics Timothy Gardner, PhD, Boston University Timothy Ford, PhD, Harvard University David Stork, PhD, Rambus Shy Shoham, PhD, The Technion I.I.T. Adam Packer, PhD, University of College London Mark Schnitzer, PhD, Stanford University
	3:00 pm – 3:20 pm	Packaging and Testing Javier Garay, PhD, University of California, San Diego
	3:20 pm – 3:40 pm	Complete Neural Interface Systems Cont. Rob Shepherd, PhD, Bionics Institute
	3:40 pm – 4:00 pm	Break & Poster Set Up
	4:00 pm – 6:00 pm	Poster Session / Teaming Sidebars / Networking Reception F. Scott Fitzgerald Ballroom
	6:00 pm – 6:30 pm	PM Q&A, Dr. Phillip Alvelda
	6:30 pm	Adjourn

	Wednesday, February 3, 2016
	8:00 am – 8:30 am	Registration and Continental Breakfast ABC - F. Scott Fitzgerald Ballroom
	8:30 am – 9:00 am	Clinical Ethics and Legal & Societal Impact James Giordano, PhD, Georgetown University Medical Center
	9:00 am – 10:00 am	Industry Speakers Karim Arabi, PhD, Qualcomm Barun Dutta, PhD, IMEC
	10:00 am – 10:15 am	Break
	10:15 am – 12:00 pm	Industry Speakers Heather Orser, PhD, Medtronic Hemant Bokil, PhD, Boston Scientific Guillaume Charvet, PhD & Madjid Hihi, PhD, CEA Leti Heather Dunn, PhD, Cirtec
	12:00 pm – 1:00 pm	Working Lunch / Open Discussion
	1:00 pm – 3:00 pm	Teaming Sidebars Continued
	3:00 pm	Adjourn