At DARPA, program managers come from outside DARPA, do time within the organization on specific projects, and then return to other places in government, academia or the private sector. In the process of doing that, they enrich both DARPA and the organization from which they came.

Stefanie Tompkins, DARPA's director, said A recent example of the value of DARPA is with the fight against COVID-19. When she was serving at DARPA about five years ago, she said she often discussed ongoing investments and work DARPA had been involved in regarding messenger RNA vaccines. Messenger RNA, or mRNA, induces the body to produce some harmless spike protein, enough to prime the immune system to react if it later encounters the real virus.

"mRNA vaccines are pretty much a household word today, but at the time, they were much, much more obscure," she said.
The DARPA investments in mRNA vaccines at the time were based on insight from forward-thinking program managers who saw value in mRNA vaccines for both military use and for public health applications, she said.

"The research that DARPA first initiated more than a decade ago is now playing a leading and catalytic role in today's fight against COVID-19," she said.

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