February 09, 2011 –
Russell: We’re looking for your ideas.
The U.S. Air Force’s Office of Scientific Research has one paramount goal: to make even the “gee-whiz” technologies of today obsolete. In order to accomplish that ambitious agenda, it is reaching out to universities and research laboratories around the world with offers of funding and collaboration.
Thomas P. Russell, director of the office, shared with an audience at CALIT2 today the three basic research areas that top leadership believes will contribute to the success of the Air Force of the future.
Those areas include: aerospace, chemical and material sciences; physics and electronics; and mathematics, information and life sciences. “We’re very discipline-oriented,” he said, although he stressed the importance of cross-disciplinary collaborations. “We need researchers who will reach out to others in different disciplines.”
The Department of Defense, he said, had a research budget last year of just under $2 billion, a figure that has increased by 40 percent over the past several years. The agency employs 60,000-70,000 scientists and engineers, all in an effort to anticipate, plan and create technologies that will be utilized 20-30 years in the future.
“We’re looking for your ideas,” he told the audience of professors, researchers and other academics. “We have to do the basic science that can impact the future of the Air Force.”
Russell, who was invited to UCI by Chancellor Michael Drake, said the Air Force faces three major creative challenges that inform its research agendas: intrusion-resistant cyber networks; trusted autonomous decision-making systems; and survivable remote-piloted systems.
Russell (center) strikes a pose with Hemminger and Drake in the chancellor’s office.
Six high-priority disruptive basic research areas can help meet those challenges. They include metamaterials and plasmotics, quantum information science, cognitive neuroscience, nanoscience and nanoengineering, synthetic biology, and computer modeling of human social behavior.
He emphasized the importance of the military’s research outreach to academic institutions, both in the U.S. and abroad, and encouraged those in attendance to submit white papers summarizing their ideas. “The U.S. share of global R&D investment is steadily decreasing,” he said. “It’s important to collaborate with overseas academic institutions as well as with those in the U.S.”
In closing, he iterated the four goals of the Air Force’s Office of Science and Research. “We want to support world-class basic research, educate tomorrow’s scientific leaders, provide meaningful transitions [from research to deployment], and fill the pipeline for future transitions.”
After his presentation, Russell met with Chancellor Drake, visited the labs of professors Wilson Ho and Ara Apkarian, toured the Beckman Laser Center with Drs. Bruce Tromberg and George Peavy, and met over lunch with Physical Sciences Dean John Hemminger, and professors Scott Samuelsen and Reg Penner.
— Anna Lynn Spitzer
