HR001121S0024: COMPUTATIONAL CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING (CCU)
Closed
This grant is closed. A newer notice from the same program is open now: Young Faculty Award (YFA) 2027 (DARPARA2701). Status: Closes January 13, 2027 (67 days left). It is in our archive of DARPA - Information Innovation Office notices from 2021.
DARPA - Information Innovation Office offered grants to the applicants described in the notice. Applications closed on July 2, 2021.
From the official notice on Grants.gov, last changed June 25, 2021. Checked November 7, 2026.
- Award amountsNot given on Grants.gov
- Cost sharingNot required
- Funding typeCooperative Agreement, Other, Procurement Contract
Key dates
| Posted | April 29, 2021 |
|---|---|
| Deadline | July 2, 2021 |
| Archived by Grants.gov | July 16, 2021 |
Who can apply
This opportunity was open to the applicants described in the notice.
- Others (see text field entitled "Additional Information on Eligibility" for clarification)
All responsible sources capable of satisfying the Government's needs may submit a proposal that shall be considered by DARPA. See the Eligibility Information section of the BAA for more information.
Is this a realistic fit?
- Most of the program's money (93% over five years) went to colleges and universities.
- No cost sharing or match is required.
What the grant funds
The Computational Cultural Understanding (CCU) Program will create cross-cultural language understanding technologies to improve a DoD operator’s situational awareness and interactional effectiveness. CCU will build natural language processing technologies that recognize, adapt to, and recommend how to operate within the emotional, social, and cultural norms that differ across societies, languages, and group affinities. To support diverse and emergent use cases, CCU technologies will be engineered to require minimal-to-no training data in a local culture, while maximizing operator success during negotiations and other interactions in the field. Automated systems would be a welcome force-multiplier for DoD interpreters; however, unlike the human cultural interpreters who enable US forces today, such systems are currently incapable of accurately analyzing cross-cultural communication or providing useful assistance to negotiations beyond basic machine translation. To achieve relative parity with human interpreters, CCU research will provide foundational technical innovations to assist negotiators and analysts with language analysis and cross-cultural dialogue in the field. These advances in the area of cross-cultural understanding will also inform processes for training and planning.
Who has won Research and Technology Development grants before
From fiscal 2021 to 2025, Research and Technology Development (12.910) awarded $1.5 billion across 739 grant awards, an average of $2.1 million per award.
| Recipient | State | Awards | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| University of Southern California | California | 26 | $84.5 million |
| Clemson University | South Carolina | 2 | $82.2 million |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Massachusetts | 29 | $63.1 million |
| Regents of the University of Michigan | Michigan | 21 | $59.6 million |
| The Regents of the University of California, San Francisco | California | 5 | $44.4 million |
Applying now
This notice no longer takes applications. Apply under the newer notice, DARPARA2701, which is open now.
The notice on Grants.gov keeps its full text and attachments, which is useful for planning a resubmission.
Questions people ask
Is HR001121S0024 still open?
No. It closed on July 2, 2021. A newer notice is open: DARPARA2701, closes January 13, 2027 (67 days left).
Who can apply for COMPUTATIONAL CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING (CCU)?
DARPA - Information Innovation Office accepted applications from the applicants described in the notice. The notice adds further conditions, so read its eligibility section.
What is the deadline for COMPUTATIONAL CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING (CCU)?
Closed July 2, 2021. Applications are no longer accepted; the program's newer notices are on this page when there are any.
Who has won Research and Technology Development grants before?
The largest recipients over five fiscal years were University of Southern California, Clemson University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The program made 739 awards worth $1.5 billion in that time.