Celebrating the Largest Federal Research Grant in Campus History, 10-13-2026

Dear faculty, staff and students, 

We are proud to share extraordinary news for our campus: CU Anschutz will receive a federal research award of up to $120 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to help advance new treatments and diagnostics for severe hemorrhage, a critical challenge in trauma and emergency care. This award is the largest federal research grant in campus history and an achievement worth celebrating.

The significance of this award goes well beyond its size. Severe bleeding is a leading cause of preventable death following traumatic injury, and better options are urgently needed for wounded service members and trauma patients, as well as mothers experiencing postpartum hemorrhage, patients undergoing major surgery and others facing life-threatening blood loss.

This award makes our campus a key research site for DARPA, with the goal of helping determine which emerging technologies show the greatest promise. Our role will include evaluating new blood and blood-like products, novel diagnostics and other approaches to treating severe hemorrhage, and helping advance those that meet rigorous safety and performance standards toward clinical trials and, ultimately, into patient care.

Our robust research enterprise, thriving innovation ecosystem and longstanding connections to military medicine make our campus particularly well suited to take on this work. This effort builds on the deep expertise and infrastructure we have developed at CU Anschutz to move promising technologies and treatments from the research laboratory to the clinic. It will draw on disciplines across our campus, with the CU Anschutz Combat Medicine Research Center and the Department of Emergency Medicine’s ATLAS Research Program serving central roles. We will also work closely with UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital on the clinical components of this work.

Our gratitude goes to Vik Bebarta, MD, Anne Ritter, DrPH, MPH, and Adit Ginde , MD, MPH, whose leadership helped bring this opportunity to CU Anschutz. We are also thankful to the many faculty, staff, clinicians and research teams whose expertise will move this vital effort forward. 

Please join us in celebrating this historic award and all it will make possible as we work to bring better options to patients facing life-threatening blood loss and to the providers caring for them.

Sincerely,

Don Elliman
Chancellor