The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will establish a Standing Committee on Transformative Science and Technology for the Department of Defense (DoD). The standing committee will organize a seminar series, designed for a non-expert audience, on emerging trends in science and technology (S&T) that could transform the Department’s approach to research and engineering (R&E). The seminar series will aim to (1) foster scientific awareness within the DoD leadership of emerging trends in S&T; (2) generate robust discussion on the applications of these most recent scientific discoveries; and (3) explore opportunities to transform and disrupt traditional R&E strategies and adopt innovative solutions that enable the United States to maintain a scientific and military advantage.
The standing committee will:

• Engage with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD(R&E)) to understand critical challenges and explore potential seminar topics that address these challenges;
• Consider salient and emerging developments in S&T that have the potential to transform or disrupt the Department’s current approaches to critical challenges;
• Identify speakers at the frontiers of the fields and chosen topics and organize a series of seminars that are aimed at a general (non-expert) audience;
• Convene periodic public sessions to review insights gleaned from prior seminars and publish and disseminate widely within the DOD a rapporteur-authored proceedings-in-brief report summarizing the discussions;
• Be available as individuals or in small groups for informal consultation with OUSD(R&E) and other DoD officials on relevant cutting-edge S&T topics; and
• On request by OUSD(R&E), help scope more in-depth Academies activities, such as roundtables, workshops, and consensus studies.