Dynamic Environments Program and Multiscale Multidisciplinary Modeling of Electronic Materials Program mentioned above will encourage intellectual and programmatic elements that will foster collaborative work for the integration of modeling, experimentation, and design in order to produce materials that address Army application needs.

The Board is not charged to review the work funded by the Army Research Office (ARO), which is an organizational entity within ARL. ARO is a significant basic research asset with a significant fraction of the total ARL basic research (6.1) budget. Considering the important role that basic research has had in the development of Army-relevant technologies and the similar high-payoff role that it could have in the future, the Board requested an opportunity to learn how the work portfolio of ARO is integrated into the activities normally reviewed by the Board. In response, ARO presented to each panel summaries of those 6.1 programs that ARO sponsors which are relevant to the ARL work reviewed by the given panel and/or presented a summary of the organizational mechanisms by which ARO interacts with staff at the directorates. The level of ARO collaboration varies across the directorates. In general, ARO demonstrated increasing attention to such collaboration, and the Board looks forward to continuing improvements in ARO’s cognizance and support of the missions of the directorates.