I am honoured to announce that I’ve been selected from within the NATO Science and Technology Organization (STO) as technical evaluator for the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) 2023 pilot Challenge Programme.

DIANA’s 2023 pilot Challenge Programme to innovators began in June 2023 with a competitive call for proposals targeting three strategic focus areas – energy resilience, secure information sharing, and sensing and surveillance – and closed on 25 August 2023.

DIANA seeks to unite the best and brightest innovators across the Alliance to provide deep tech and dual-use innovators with access to NATO resources including grant funding, acceleration services, and pathways to adapt their solutions for defence and security needs.

Derived from defence and security needs across the Alliance, informed by the state-of-development of commercial technologies, and designed for deep tech innovators – the programme asked for innovators’ help in solving critical dual-use (civilian and defence) challenges.

The process of assessing proposals is now underway. Innovators accepted into DIANA’s challenges will receive grant funding to support their technology development and demonstration, participate in a customised commercial and defence-focused accelerator programme, gain access to test and evaluation resources across the Alliance, and benefit from curated exposure to investors and end users to support technology transition and adoption.