DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO) has posted Special Notice DARPA-SN-26-111 for a forthcoming SHINE (Selective Harnessing of Intrinsic Neuroplasticity Engineering) Disruption Opportunity. A prerecorded Information Session webcast will run from 11:00 to 11:30 am EDT on 25 August 2026, with registration closing 14 August at 4:00 pm EDT or when capacity is reached. The DO release itself is anticipated in August 2026. Technical point of contact is Robin Bonomi.
What SHINE is scoped to
DARPA’s own verbatim SHINE objective, from the Special Notice: “SHINE aims to harness neuroplasticity to precisely and non-invasively target and enhance the brain’s ability to adapt and rewire itself, allowing for more complete recovery after injury. The program will establish whether adaptive neuroplasticity can be selectively induced within targeted, dysfunctional neural circuits while minimizing effects in surrounding tissue, enabling a new generation of precision neuroplasticity technologies.”
The Notice names five modality domains as in-scope: molecular engineering, neuromodulation, biomaterials, behavioral interventions, and synthetic biology. The stated technology-foundation goal is future therapies that support “the natural recovery and repair for dysfunctional neural circuits without disrupting healthy brain function.” The scope is medical recovery from neural injury, not human enhancement.
Some earlier coverage framed SHINE as a near-infrared light program. That framing is not in the Special Notice, which is modality-agnostic across the five domains. The near-infrared angle appears to have been pulled from a separate DARPA program and applied to SHINE incorrectly.
Award vehicle and cycle
All awards from the SHINE DO will be Other Transactions (OTs) for prototype projects issued under the authority of 10 U.S.C. § 4022. The DO itself is a Solicitation Notice released under the parent Disruptioneering Program Announcement, DARPA-PA-25-07. Per DARPA’s own framing, the Disruptioneering mechanism enables DARPA to initiate a new investment in less than 120 calendar days from idea inception, defined as the date the Solicitation Notice is posted to sam.gov. That is substantially faster than the standard multi-year BAA cycle.
DARPA also notes that SHINE program goals may be met by proposers intending to perform fundamental research, which broadens the eligible-performer pool beyond defence-specialised primes to academic and startup performers.
Notable eligibility posture
The SHINE Information Session is open to potential proposers who are US citizens, US permanent residents, and foreign nationals. That is unusually open for a DARPA Special Notice at pre-solicitation stage. Foreign nationals must complete either a DARPA Form 60 (for industry or academia) or an Official Visit Request (for foreign government personnel) submitted through their country’s Washington embassy by 14 August. The openness to foreign-national participation at the Information Session signals DARPA is casting a wider international-academic net than a typical defence-adjacent solicitation.
Where SHINE sits in DARPA’s neurotech portfolio
SHINE follows a long line of DARPA neurotech investment. TNT (Targeted Neuroplasticity Training) is the closest direct precursor on the plasticity axis. N3 (Next-Generation Nonsurgical Neurotechnology) was announced 2018 with contract awards in 2019 and was the most recent major non-invasive brain-interface program. RAM, HAPTIX, REMIND, and NESD sit further back in the portfolio. STRENGTHEN (Strengthening Resilient Emotions and Nimble Cognition through Engineering Neuroplasticity), a separate DSO neuroplasticity program run by Dr. Greg Witkop, is the current running counterpart focused on emotional resilience and cognitive nimbleness rather than injury recovery.
The DARPA federal research layer has historically produced the talent and technology pipeline that today’s US commercial BCI and neuromodulation cohort was built on. Synchron’s founders (Tom Oxley, Nick Opie, Rahul Sharma) came out of DARPA’s RE-NET (Reliable Neural-Interface Technology) program via the University of Melbourne, which the university reports was the only non-US-based team funded under RE-NET, with an initial approximately US$1 million from DARPA for proof-of-concept work around 2012. Multiple current-generation clinical BCI operators trace back to the BrainGate consortium that grew alongside DARPA-funded research. SHINE at scope-out sits inside that continuing pattern, focused specifically on injury-recovery neuroplasticity mechanisms rather than direct-decode BCIs.
What we do not know yet
No budget envelope is disclosed in the Special Notice. No performers or awardees are named at pre-solicitation. Specific brain regions, clinical indications beyond “injury recovery,” and technical performance targets will be spelled out only in the actual DO release, anticipated within August 2026.
What to watch
Three near-term signals matter.
First, the actual DO release document, expected within August 2026, will spell out the specific technical performance targets, evaluation criteria, and funding envelope that will determine who bids.
Second, which academic and industry performers submit and are down-selected. Precedent from N3 and TNT is that DARPA neurotech DOs tend to attract a mix of major research universities, defence primes, and specialist neurotech firms. Awardee identity will indicate whether SHINE stays within the traditional DARPA neurotech ecosystem or draws in the newer commercial BCI cohort. The foreign-national eligibility at Info Session stage suggests non-US academic participation is possible.
Third, whether STRENGTHEN and SHINE together mature into a sustained DSO neuroplasticity portfolio. STRENGTHEN and SHINE run as parallel DSO efforts under different program managers (Witkop and Bonomi respectively) with different scopes (emotional resilience versus injury recovery). Whether DSO adds a third program on this axis within the coming twelve months would be the read on whether non-invasive neuroplasticity is becoming a multi-year DSO priority.