 When you look around at the modern landscape of today's Army technological capabilities, you are seeing the impact of basic science research funded by ARO 15, 20, and even 30 years ago. From helicopter aerodynamics to AI to laser technology, for 70 years ARO has guided foundational research that turns science fiction into reality. ARO's work is all about discovering where the frontiers of science can be even further extended and using that groundbreaking science for the good of the soldier. ARO funds basic research conducted at 250 universities across the country and around the world with more than 1,100 individual researchers including 24 Nobel laureates. ARO is the Army system for combining the power of the global research community with the future of national defense. The science we discover changes the world in the process. ARO and the other DOD funding agencies are unique and that we're not just looking to push science forward and support new scientific advancements and discoveries. We're also doing that always with an eye toward an opportunity to provide new capabilities for the Army of the future and that really gives us a unique framework and a unique lens that we look at research projects with. The work we're driving is really the discovery of new science so we see tremendous opportunities for it to impact the soldier. ARO also plays a really unique role just in how we engage academia and industry. It's not just ARO but also this open campus model and this is really about building this network. We know we can't just be in isolation and create some wonderful discovery in science. As amazing as that would be we'll just have to throw it over the wall and hope the Army uses it. It's not the right model anymore so instead we're looking to bring those discoveries and develop those partnerships. When you're funded by ARO you're working on science but you're getting ingrained in the Army and what it means is to actually apply science to real Army and Navy and Air Force problems. The mission of the Army Research Office as part of the U.S. Army Futures Command, U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, Army Research Laboratory is to execute the Army's Extramural Basic Research Program. The goal of basic research is to drive scientific discoveries that will provide the Army with significant advances in operational capabilities through high-risk, high-payoff research, primarily with universities but with also large and small businesses. For us to be successful as an Army and as a lab trying to help the Army, we really need to be able to understand fundamentally what's happening in any military engagement. Identifying new possibilities by engaging with the extramural community. We're actually able to meet people who have new ideas, invest in those new ideas and create new capabilities ultimately for the Army by going in the new scientific discovery areas. ARO in particular has a key role to play for Army in that it is our job to invest in the science today that's going to impact the technologies that are needed 20 or 30 or 40 years from now. We serve as guardians of the people. ARO program managers have been essential to broadening a network of researchers on the cutting edge of scientific domains critical to the future and concept centers development of the next Army operating concept. We are already seeing our partners at the futures and concept center engaging academia in new and productive ways based on these long-established ARO connections. ARO program managers have a unique combination of subject matter expertise and funding authority in our technical area and this allows us to identify promising scientific opportunities that have potential for significant payoff for the Army in the future. As a program manager I don't think I'm too dissimilar from the other program managers at ARO and that we interact with our PIs very regularly. I look for constant email updates and phone calls. I meet my PIs at conferences. I meet my PIs when we have internal ARO review meetings. So it's really a constant dialogue about what is happening with the science and I think with the kind of science that ARO supports. That is absolutely integral to the process. Taking ideas that are the cutting edge of science and bringing them into the Army S&T enterprise and then seeing different levels of the Army scientific enterprise capitalized upon these ideas. That's an extremely rewarding aspect of the job to take it from kind of the idea domain and then to watch it sort of mature and become more targeted and to actually precipitate future Army capability. We as program managers are given the liberty to pursue science that is important for the Army. Being able to bring attention to new and exciting work is very important because that's what allows the folks in the Army the bench level scientists the bench level engineers people that are involved in training and writing doctrine to be able to say this is the way we're fighting today but hey I mean 20 years from now we could be fighting in an entirely different manner. This is a really intoxicating place to work. Here people who like science can see their science really go somewhere to support the soldier and bringing those two things together that's what ARO is all about.