The physics of harnessing light to see around corners …

The biology of living materials that adapt to their environment and heal after damage…

But most of all, the intellectual chemistry of 1,000 scientists, engineers and other innovators all under one roof, hearing from leaders in fields ranging from artificial intelligence and quantum physics to microbial communication and satellite flocks … learning about work at the edges of discovery and the implications of advances that are bubbling at the intersections of technology’s fastest-changing disciplines.

That’s what attendees can expect at DARPA’s “Wait, What? A Future Technology Forum,” happening in St. Louis September 9th through 11th.

Registration closes at the end of this week.

“Wait, What?” will look beyond today's products and businesses to the next generation of emerging technologies and capabilities that stand to shape our world a decade or more from now. In addition to plenary and breakout presentations led by experts from across the country, “Wait, What?” will feature dozens of demonstrations of DARPA technologies currently under development, including new ways to meld minds and machines with advances in artificial intelligence and neurotechnology; novel approaches to taming atoms and photons in real time; methods for programing microbes and more with synthetic DNA to create new materials with extraordinary properties; and the application of multidimensional topologies to make sense of big data.

“Wait, What?” aims to engage and connect scientists and technologists not just in one field, as at most meetings, but across many fast-moving fields—and to inspire them to focus their considerable talents on some of our Nation's most pressing challenges. This kind of deep engagement with the research and technical community is central to DARPA's mission of breakthrough technologies for national security.

Registration closes July 31.

For more information and to register, visit https://archive.darpa.mil/WaitWhat/. Questions may be addressed to Stacey Loftus at darpawaitwhat@darpa.mil. Media queries should be directed to outreach@darpa.mil.

“Wait, What?” Plenary Speakers:

GUNNAR CARLSSON

An algebraic topologist developing insights about how to handle and visualize big data

R. Alta Charo

A scholar of the legal and ethical implications of emerging technologies

KARL DEISSEROTH

A pioneer in optogenetics, using light to turn individual working neurons on and off at will

TOM DIETTERICH

A pathfinding computer scientist applying human intelligence to choices about artificial intelligence

JEFF GORE

A physicist discovering the fundamental rules of population dynamics, collapse and tipping points through microbes

WILL MARSHALL

A space entrepreneur launching flocks of small satellites to image all of Planet Earth, every day

MARK NORELL

A paleontologist and molecular geneticist shattering preconceptions about dinosaurs

RAMESH RASKAR

A researcher using femtosecond photography to see around corners

ALBERTO SANGIOVANNI-VINCENTELLI

An engineer inventing design tools for the trillion-device future

ZACH SERBER

An entrepreneur engineering living cells to create materials and chemistries the world has never seen

LUCIANNE WALKOWICZ

An astronomer with a biologist's bent, studying stellar influences on planetary habitability

JUN YE

A physicist herding atoms colder than the coldest spot in the known universe