Press Release

ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, MD – The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development International Technology Center Indo-Pacific, in partnership with the DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory, awarded Dr. Yuri Kivshar a quantum optics seed project for his work in quantum cryptography, laying the foundation to manufacture small and low-cost next-generation network devices.

Quantum cryptography will help Soldiers by protecting data for longer periods of time and across longer distances. The technology will also enable Soldiers to communicate in areas where there is a lot of interference.

“We don’t expect turn-key solutions based on these research findings to occur within five years, but it is critical to support potentially high-payoff, cutting-edge research, especially outside the United States,” said Timothy Leong, Ph.D., ITC Indo-Pacific research director.

The initial award is approximately $92,000, with a second option year of $93,000. Three other organizations – the Australian National University, the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light and the Department of Energy Oak Ridge National Laboratory Center for Nanophase Materials Science – will match the funding with grants worth $196,000.

Kivshar, a pioneer in nonlinear photonics and metamaterials, is recognized as the most highly cited Australian researcher in physics and interdisciplinary fields. The award will primarily be used to fund a research fellow at Australian National University where Kivshar is a professor. The researchers will provide semi-annual updates on their work; if the progress is positive, the optional second year will be granted.

As the “eyes and ears” of the Army S&T Enterprise, the ITCs identify cutting-edge S&T that may help the U.S. Army and the greater Department of Defense. There are nine ITCs located around the world within the DEVCOM command. The ITC Indo-Pacific team includes Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia and Philippines. In FY20, the ITC Indo-Pacific team supported 36 efforts at 26 institutions in eight countries, leveraging $2.7M in partnerships.

According to DEVCOM officials, sponsoring international research leads to significant cost savings by leveraging other governments and universities. It also gives the U.S. access to multiple institutions outside the U.S. that perform high quality research in the natural sciences.

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The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, known as DEVCOM, is home to thousands of the Army’s scientists, engineers, technicians, and analysts located around the globe that leverage cutting-edge technologies to empower the American Warfighter with the data and abilities to see, sense, make decisions and act faster than our adversaries – today and in the future. As part of the Army Futures Command, Team DEVCOM takes risks to find new solutions every single day. Our experts drive innovation, improve existing technologies, and engineer solutions to technical limitations. Our work goes beyond theory to simulation and prototyping. We take potential S&T solutions from the lab “into the dirt” for experimentation alongside Soldiers. DEVCOM prides itself as a global ecosystem of innovators, from world-class universities and large defense contractors, to small minority-owned businesses and