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2015 Minerva Meeting Resources

The 2015 Minerva Meeting was held 9-10 September 2015 in downtown DC. Nearly 300 participants were in attendance, around half affiliated with defense and USG science and technology, policy, or operational organizations. A summary report and slides are available.

2015 Minerva Awards

The Minerva Steering Committee is pleased to announce it has selected eleven proposals for the cadre of 2015 awards. The selection process was extremely competitive, drawing from a total of 297 white papers and 46 full proposals. The total funds awarded for this set of projects is expected to be around four million dollars in the first year and $14 million over three years.

Learn more about new and ongoing awards.

Research, data, & Tools

• Fall 2015 Minerva Research Summaries and Resources book
• List of ongoing university-led Minerva research, including brief descriptions for the 2015 Minerva awardees

What is Minerva?

Just as our military forces could not effectively operate without understanding the physical terrain and environment, detection of radical actors and regime disruptions is limited by our understanding of the cultural and political environments where those threats develop. The Minerva Research Initiative, initiated by former Secretary Gates in 2008, seeks to build deeper understanding of the social, cultural, and political dynamics that shape regions of strategic interest around the world.

Deeper understanding of global populations and their variance as provided by Minerva-funded research will yield more effective strategic and operational policy decisions. Minerva scholars have already briefed valuable, warfighter-relevant insights to senior officials such as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, decision makers in the defense policy community, and on the ground to our combatant commands.

As the nascent program continues to grow, university-driven Minerva research will further enable critical social and cultural understanding to help decision makers effectively address today's known and tomorrow's unknown challenges.

Learn more about the objectives and history of the Minerva program.

For additional information regarding the Minerva Initiative, email us.