How the SMART plan could secure critical minerals

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the State of Utah, working through the University of Utah, have agreed to create a new Strategic Materials Accelerator & Research Test Bed intended to boost U.S. supplies of critical minerals and rare earth elements. The initiative, known as SMART, is designed to help move promising extraction and processing technologies out of the lab and into real-world use, addressing a persistent U.S. dependence on foreign sources for inputs central to defense systems and consumer electronics.

The test bed will be housed at the University of Utah and will give federal agencies and innovators a venue to validate emerging approaches at larger scale, with an emphasis on processing capabilities that can shore up domestic supply chains. “One of the biggest challenges in this space is not invention, but translation,” said Sha-Chelle Manning, chief of DARPA’s Commercial Strategy Office. “SMART is designed to reduce the risk of scaling new technologies by giving innovators a place to validate performance at meaningful scale, helping accelerate the transition from breakthrough science to actual capability.”

U.S. policymakers and industry have long warned that reliance on overseas sources—particularly for the processing of rare earths—creates bottlenecks and geopolitical risk. Rare earths and other strategic minerals underpin everything from guided missiles and radar to wind turbines, electric vehicles and smartphones. SMART is positioned as a bridge between discovery and deployment, aiming to shorten timelines for pilot testing, benchmarking, and scale-up.

“What makes SMART unique is its ability to connect world-class discovery with equally strong benchmarking and scaling infrastructure. That integration is essential for accelerating strategic materials innovation in a way that is both scientifically rigorous and practically impactful,” said Jakob Jensen, associate vice president for research, University of Utah.

Among the early users of the facility will be teams from DARPA’s Environmental Microbes as a BioEngineering Resource (EMBER) program. EMBER focuses on biotechnology-based methods to separate and purify rare earths from unconventional domestic feedstocks, including phosphate mine waste, acid mine drainage, and materials recovered from electronics recycling. Those pathways are drawing attention as the United States looks to diversify supply and reduce environmental impacts tied to traditional mining.

“Our performers are developing novel biotechnologies for mineral processing, and SMART offers a significant opportunity to test and refine those innovations,” said Tiffany Prest, Ph.D., EMBER program manager. “We look forward to leveraging the testbed to better understand the challenges of scaling these technologies and to help mature them into practical domestic resources.”

The new test bed aligns with DARPA’s broader effort to push cutting-edge research into commercial and regional capabilities that can strengthen national and economic security. While the announcement did not disclose funding details or a project timeline, it underscores a growing federal and state focus on accelerating domestic capacity across the strategic materials value chain—from identifying resources and extracting them to processing, separation and purification.

Utah, home to a deep mining and materials science heritage and a major research university with strengths in metallurgy and chemical engineering, offers a ready-made ecosystem for the effort. By providing shared infrastructure where public and private teams can validate performance against rigorous benchmarks, SMART’s backers say the test bed is intended to cut risk for new technologies, attract additional investment, and help build a pipeline of deployable U.S. capabilities in critical minerals.