Don't forget to other funding agencies besides DARPA:
<a href="http://www.acq.osd.mil/osbp/sbir/solicitations/sbir093/index.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.acq.osd.mil/osbp/sbir/solicitations/sbir093/index...</a>
as well as the STTR program:
<a href="http://www.acq.osd.mil/osbp/sbir/solicitations/sttr09B/index.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.acq.osd.mil/osbp/sbir/solicitations/sttr09B/index...</a><p>The SBIR grants money to small businesses, about $100K for Phaise I (six months) and $750K for Phase II (two years).
The STTR is for collaborations between a small business and a research institution (e.g. university).<p>In this batch of solicitations, I have seen a solicitation for "Computational Models of Leadership" as well as a STTR on GPU/CUDA computing.<p>During the pre-release period (i.e. now) you can communicate directly with the topic authors. This is a technique you can use to establish rapport with the topic authors, which makes them more comfortable funding someone they've never funded before.