Epirus CTO to Speak at DARPA’s Electronics Resurgence Initiative Summit
Epirus Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer Dr. Bo Marr will join other top U.S. technology innovators as a presenter at the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s (DARPA) Electronics Resurgence Initiative (ERI) Summit on July 17 in Detroit, Michigan. Epirus is the only U.S. developer of software-defined electromagnetic pulse (EMP) technology—a short burst of directed energy that can take down unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), otherwise known as drones, a growing national security problem that has caused airport shutdowns and other disturbances. DARPA is the federal agency responsible for making pivotal investments and breakthrough technologies for the U.S. Department of Defense.
The ERI Summit’s agenda focuses on Edge Intelligence (EI), which “enables smart devices to sense, decide with, act on and send information at the point of raw data collection rather than relying on the cloud.” Marr’s presentation is titled, “Edge Intelligence in Extremely Compact Form Factors Enables New Military Capability.”
“I am grateful to DARPA for the opportunity to share our successful field testing and research that shows the tactical value of the world’s first software-defined EMP weapon aided by artificial intelligence for targeting,” said Marr, who is a Fellow of the National Science Foundation. “I look forward to discussing how two trends are emerging in edge processing in military applications – increased target recognition, classification, and tracking, especially in combating drone swarms, and the move towards fully autonomous systems.”
Other presenters at the ERI Summit include senior researchers and executives from Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Intel, and Raytheon, as well as professors from UC Berkeley, Stanford University, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Michigan, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Purdue University. On June 1, 2017, DARPA’s Microsystems Technology Office announced a new ERI effort to focus on creating “far-reaching improvements in electronics performance well beyond the limits of traditional scaling.” According to DARPA, “ERI draws on new and existing DARPA programs to make a significant investment into enabling circuit specialization and managing complexity.”
Marr is well-respected for his leadership in the development of major RF-based products and roadmaps, including on airborne systems such as the F-18, Growler, F-15, and Coyote UAS. While at Raytheon, Marr won the CEO award for innovation, filed over 70 U.S. and international patents, and was a technical lead on the Next Generation Jammer program. He has reviewed and facilitated 600 inventions and 100 peer-reviewed papers as elected Raytheon IP Champion. Marr began his career at IBM where he co-engineered the chips behind Watson. He is a Fellow of the National Science Foundation and holds a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
About Epirus:
Epirus is the only U.S. developer of software-defined electromagnetic pulse (EMP) technology—a short burst of directed energy to take down unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), otherwise known as drones. The company is under contract with various U.S. Department of Defense agencies and has successfully tested its EMP systems under rigorous government oversight. Headquartered near the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center in El Segundo, CA, Epirus draws on the heritage that launched the Space Age combined with the culture of innovation from founders, early investors, and executives who have been behind Palantir, Oculus, Rally Health, and OpenGov, among other leading companies. The leadership team at Epirus includes senior-level engineers, researchers, and scientists from Raytheon, Boeing, IBM, and Google. Collectively, they hold over 120 U.S. patents—more patents per employee than any of its closest competitors. The company has expertise in understanding how drones respond to EMP, which helps inform its work in developing technological innovations into how America will defeat drone swarms. Epirus is formally collaborating with two legacy aerospace and defense companies.
