DARPA BAA 15 04 Low Resource Languages for Emergent Incidents (LORELEI) | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

DARPA BAA 15-04, titled Low Resource Languages for Emergent Incidents (LORELEI), is a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency solicitation run through DARPA's Information Innovation Office that targets rapid-response human language technology for situations where an unexpected event occurs and the key language or dialect is one that has little existing data, tooling, or expert coverage. The central idea is to develop methods that let analysts and responders quickly make sense of communications and information streams in languages that are not well supported by conventional NLP pipelines, especially when time is critical and the operational context is evolving. DARPA frames this as research and development intended to produce major leaps in capability, not incremental tuning of existing systems.

The opportunity is positioned as science and technology research and development (CFDA 12.910) and is open to essentially any type of applicant entity (unrestricted eligibility), subject to any clarifications contained in the full announcement. DARPA indicates it may use multiple award instruments, including cooperative agreements, other transaction-type instruments, and procurement contracts, which signals that performers could be engaged under different management models depending on the nature and maturity of the proposed work and the government’s desired level of involvement. There is no cost sharing or matching requirement listed, so proposers are not expected to bring mandatory non-federal funds to be eligible.

Technically, the BAA emphasizes "rapid response" language technology aimed at low-resource conditions. In practice, that typically means being able to stand up usable language processing capabilities quickly when you do not have large labeled corpora, mature lexicons, robust speech recognizers, or high-quality machine translation systems for the language in question. It also implies operating under realistic constraints: sparse training data, limited time to collect new data, noisy real-world inputs (social media, SMS-like text, scanned documents, field reports, speech), and the need to deliver actionable understanding rather than academic benchmarks alone. DARPA explicitly states that it is looking for innovative approaches enabling revolutionary advances in science, devices, or systems, and that work mainly producing evolutionary improvements to the current state of practice is excluded. That is an important boundary: proposals needed to argue for step-change methods, new paradigms, or convincingly novel integrations that materially shift what can be done in low-resource emergency settings.

The grant posting references an Amendment 1, whose purpose is to clarify what linguistic capabilities will be provided by the Government. In other words, the amendment is meant to reduce uncertainty about what language assets, baseline tools, datasets, or other linguistic resources DARPA itself would make available to performers, and what gaps performers would be expected to fill. The amendment highlights changes in yellow in the attached document, indicating it should be read alongside the main BAA to understand the final assumptions about government-furnished information and capabilities. For teams planning an approach, that clarification matters because it affects data collection plans, evaluation readiness, staffing (for example, reliance on linguists versus automated acquisition), and how much of the early phase is spent bootstrapping versus improving operational performance.

From an administrative perspective, the opportunity was posted October 30, 2014, with a listed closing date of January 9, 2015 at 12:00 pm Eastern Time (the summary text also contains an inconsistent mention of "January 9, 2014," which appears to be a typographical error given the rest of the posting dates). The archive date is February 8, 2015. The official listing points applicants to the FedBizOpps link for the full announcement materials, and provides a government contact for access issues: Dr. Boyan Onyshkevych, DARPA I2O Program Manager and I2O BAA Coordinator. Overall, LORELEI is best read as a DARPA effort to push the field toward fast-deployable, low-resource language understanding and translation capabilities tailored to emergent incidents, with an emphasis on breakthroughs over incremental improvements and with government-provided linguistic support clarified in the first amendment.

Browse more opportunities from the same agency: DARPA Information Innovation Office

Browse more opportunities from the same category: Science and Technology and other Research and Development

Next opportunity: USAID Uganda Social Marketing Activity

Previous opportunity: WaterSMART Water and Energy Efficiency Grants for FY 2015

USGrants.org Applicant Portal:

Are you interested in learning about about how to apply for this government funding opportunity? You can create a free applicant account and receive instant access to our applicant portal that many business owners like you have benefited from.

Apply for DARPA BAA 15 04

 

[Watch] how do funding administrators access proposals?

Applicants also applied for:

Applicants who have applied for this opportunity (DARPA BAA 15 04) also looked into and applied for these:

 

Grant application guides and resources

It is always free to apply for government grants. However the process may be very complex depending on the funding opportunity you are applying for. Let us help you!

Apply for Grants

 

 

Premium leads for funding administrators, grant writers, and loan issuers

Thousands of people visit our website for their funding needs every day. When a user creates a grant proposal and files for submission, we pass the information on to funding administrators, grant writers, and government loan issuers.

If you manage government grant programs, provide grant writing services, or issue personal or government loans, we can help you reach your audience.

Subscribe to Leads

 

Request more information:

Would you like to learn more about this funding opportunity, similar opportunities to "DARPA BAA 15 04", eligibility, application service, and/or application tips? Submit an inquiry below:

Don't forget to subscribe to our grant alerts mailing list to receive weekly alerts on new and updated grant funding opportunities like this one in your email.