The Minerva Research Initiative is geared toward the funding of university-led social science basic research teams. The Minerva Steering Committee has selected eleven proposals for the cohort of 2015 awards, which are expected to receive funding for at least three years. The total monetary award for this set of projects is approximated at four million dollars in the first year and $14 million over a three year period.

 The Minerva Initiative was launched by the Secretary of Defense in 2008 and strives to improve the Department of Defense’s basic understanding of the social, cultural, behavioral, and political powers that frame the most influential portions of our world.  The Minerva program seeks recommendations from the DoD and United States government national security policy and operational communities for topical directions of future research to ensure that Minerva priorities continue to target the most critical knowledge gaps. The insights generated from Minerva’s research have been and continue to be utilized to inform policy for current and future defense priorities.

Past and present funded Minerva research projects can be found here.

Dr. Erin Fitzgerald currently serves as an IPA from the Potomac Institute in dual roles in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD): as a Strategist in OSD Policy and as Science Advisor and Program Director for Social Sciences in the Basic Research Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (ASD(R&E)) for the Minerva Research Initiative.