The Department of Defense Announced Awards Totaling $2 Million for Minerva’s Defense Education Civilian University Research (DECUR) Partnership
The Department of Defense (DoD) announced the selection of faculty teams for awards through Minerva’s FY2019 Defense Education and Civilian University Research (DECUR) Partnership, supporting fundamental research and professional military education.
This partnership aims to develop collaborative basic research relationships between Defense Professional Military Education (PME) Institutions and Civilian Research Universities and achieve the following: 1) support basic research projects that improve capacities in security related basic social science; 2) inform Department of Defense policymakers; 3) train future military leaders in social science methods; and 4) enhance scientific cooperation between civilian and military educational institutions. The Minerva Research Initiative, funded by the Basic Research Office, under the Director of Defense for Research and Engineering, Research and Technology, supports basic research that focuses on topics of particular relevance to U.S. national security. Through its network of faculty investigators, Minerva strengthens the department’s connections with the social science
community and helps DoD better understand and prepare for future challenges, particularly those prioritized in the National Defense Strategy.
The DECUR Partnership will not only facilitate leading social science researchers in addressing NDS-relevant problems but through this partnership future military leaders will gain experience in using social science to think through the social context of security problems,said Dr. Bindu Nair, Director of the Basic Research Office.The knowledge and methodologies generated from Minerva awardees are an important source of new ideas from the social science community to understand better the social aspects that underlie security and stability.