The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health is investing up to $24 million in an Emory University-led project that specializes in the use of mRNA to treat cancer and other diseases that have limited treatment options.

ARPA-H on Wednesday debuted the Curing the Uncurable via RNA-Encoded Immunogene Tuning project, which is part of the Biden administration’s Cancer Moonshot initiative.

CUREIT, which is the first award funded through ARPA-H’s Open Broad Agency Announcement, will work toward an mRNA and gene modulation delivery toolkit for illnesses related to immune dysregulation. The technology is expected to activate immune cells to target tumors or diseased cells responsible for autoimmune disorders and infectious diseases.

“CUREIT aims to develop entirely new tools and methods to improve therapies so that fewer families experience loss from cancer,” said Amy Jenkins, mission office director of ARPA-H. “The advances in programming immune cell function that may result from CUREIT could also be broadly applied to many other health conditions affecting Americans.”

The Department of Energy is distributing $126 million in grants to small businesses working on clean energy research and development projects.

The funding will be divided among 106 awards involving 90 small businesses with initiatives focused on cybersecurity, grid reliability, nuclear nonproliferation, fusion energy and decarbonization, DOE announced Friday.

The agency is investing an average of $1.1 million over two years in individual Phase II R&D projects under the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs. The studies are scattered across 27 states, mostly in California and Massachusetts.

Several DOE offices are involved, including the National Nuclear Security Administration; Office of Electricity; Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy; and Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response.

“Small businesses tackle monumental issues all over the country, including climate change,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm remarked. “DOE’s small business grants help companies across the country to develop the technologies, products, and infrastructure we will need for the transition to clean energy.” 

Deborah Rosenblum, assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs, said her top priority is ensuring that the Department of Defense takes a proactive, integrated approach to nuclear modernization initiatives, DOD News reported Friday.

“This work is so important and so vital and is really a no-fail mission for us, we need to make sure that the senior-most leadership of the department remains focused on it, is actively working on it [and] is solving problems and challenges,” said Rosenblum, who additionally serves as executive secretary of the Nuclear Weapons Council.

She noted that DOD considers nuclear deterrence its top priority as the U.S. deals with the challenges posed by Russia and China.

Rosenblum also said positioning the Nuclear Weapons Council as the principal focus of implementing modernization is a key step in ensuring that senior DOD leaders have collective visibility to manage risks in a proactive manner.

The Department of Homeland Security should improve its communication with acquisition stakeholders in order to refine its procurement programs, the Government Accountability Office said in a new report.

GAO on Tuesday published findings which showed that while DHS has been implementing leading acquisition risk management principles, its guidelines fell short of taking into account the potential obstacles at enterprise level.

The government watchdog studied the procurement risk management process of DHS and eight of its components at the program and portfolio levels. GAO found that there were instances where DHS was overly optimistic in assessing risks, which led to the underestimation of cost and schedule for the development and fielding of capabilities.

GAO recommended that DHS add provisions to its risk management guidance, including how to communicate acquisition milestones to leadership, how to manage realized risks and their consequences, and creating more principles on portfolio-level risk management. The agency also cited areas for improvement in cost-benefit analysis of developing versus acquiring technologies, as part of a risk management knowledge sharing approach across the department.

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity will hold a proposers day on Oct. 24 in Washington, D.C. to discuss with the industry a new program that aims to identify the safe uses of large language models for applications relevant to the intelligence community.

A notice posted Friday on SAM.gov states that the BENGAL initiative seeks to develop novel technologies and methodologies to detect, characterize and mitigate threats and vulnerabilities associated with using LLMs.

Program participants will create a taxonomy of LLM threat modes within their selected topic domains and develop tools to probe LLM models to identify biases, threats or vulnerabilities.

The U.S. government plans to use LLMs for a range of applications including the rapid summarization and contextualization of IC documents.

IARPA will introduce topic areas and additional program requirements on the proposers day.

Interested parties have until Oct. 18 to register for the event.

U.S. Navy Capt. Anthony Saxon assumed duties as the new commander of the Joint Interoperability Test Command during a change of command ceremony held Aug. 17 at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.

Saxon replaced Navy Capt. Robert Matthias, who took the helm at JITC in July 2021, and will lead the Department of Defense component that tests and certifies information technology and national security systems for the joint force, the Defense Information Systems Agency said Friday.

“Building upon past achievements and eagerly facing future challenges encapsulate our organizational essence,” Saxon said.

Saxon most recently served as assistant chief of staff for command, control, communications, computers and intelligence for the 3rd Fleet. In this role, he oversaw the Navy’s strategic communications centers.

U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Robert Skinner, director of DISA and a 2023 Wash100 Award recipient, presided over the ceremony and commended Matthias’ leadership.

The Defense Intelligence Agency has updated its report that provides a visual comparison of unmanned aerial vehicles used by Russian forces in Ukraine and Iranian UAVs used to target U.S. and partner interests in the Middle East.

DIA said Friday the updated report provides additional findings and declassified images to prove Russia is using Iran’s drones in Ukraine despite Tehran’s claims that the UAVs were not Iranian.

The unclassified report is based on DIA’s display of components of the Iranian-made Shahed-131 UAVs recovered in Ukraine and Iraq, as well as Shahed-101, a smaller drone recovered in Iraq.

The original document was released in February and included images and descriptions of the Mohajer 6 multirole UAV and the Shahed-136 and Shahed-131 one-way attack UAVs.