We hosted our 55th annual Spring Review from 5 through 9 March, 2012. AFOSR Program Managers discussed what they have funded over the last year as well as insight into trends and plans for the future basic research programs of interest to the Air Force.
The AFOSR Spring Review provides an excellent opportunity for both an introspective self-examination of a wide-ranging research portfolio as well as welcoming the views of customers and stakeholders in the continuous pursuit of cutting edge research that forges the foundation of our future Air Force.
This year we streamed the presentation of AFOSR’s annual Spring Review (SR12) so anyone could watch online and ask questions. You can watch videos from the spring review on our and also download PDFs from our Spring Review Website. We have also embedded the videos below.
Feel free to ask questions of the program managers here and we will try to get them answered.
On Jan. 30, we hosted a presentation by computer scientist Dr. Dina Katabi from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Katabi’s presentation was part of a continuing series of events planned throughout the coming year as part of AFOSR’s 60th anniversary celebration.
Her presentation focused on the challenge of improving the throughput and reliability of wireless systems–a topic which touches all institutions and every individual in this age of ever-increasing digital speed, mobile devices, and consumer demand for increased performance.
Dr. Katabi’s approach in improving wireless networks is centered on cutting through the layers of the “network stack” that comprises the wireless system. The existing architecture of both the hard-wired and wireless network stack is based on layer separation where the physical–read hardware–layers ideally deliver the correct packets of digital information. But errors in the physical layer are orders of magnitude higher in wireless networks. To address this shortfall, Professor Katabi offers a “Cross-Layer Design” that exploits the interaction at the physical layer, basically decoding packet collisions (the transmission errors) to reassemble correct packets, improving the performance of the network and subsequent higher (wireless) layers.
Dr. Katabi also addressed data loss rate in mobile video applications using the same cross-layered design, where again, data packet collisions can be decoded followed by the exploitation of those collisions to increase signal throughput using analog network coding which results in a more robust mobile video that does not glitch or stall.
Dr. Katabi is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Science at MIT, a member of the Computer Science Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and leads the NETMIT networking group at MIT. The primary goal of her research is to build new protocols and architectures that improve the robustness and performance of computer networks. AFOSR has funded this MIT effort since 2008.
AFOSR-funded researcher, Sir John Pendry spoke to a crowd of over 200 at the Air Force Institute of Technology’s (AFIT) Kenney Hall Auditorium Monday as part of AFIT’s regular speaker series and in celebration of the 60th anniversary of AFOSR.
Pendry is well known as a condensed matter theorist and as the Chair in Theoretical Solid State Physics at the Imperial College in London where he has worked extensively on electronic and structural properties of surfaces developing the theory of low energy diffraction and electronic surface states.
One of his most notable achievements is a theory for the perfect lens that has no limits to resolution—a microscope that can resolve objects smaller than the wavelength of light.
In addition to this work, in 2006, Pendry collaborated with David Smith at Duke University to develop a theory to hide an arbitrary object from electromagnetic fields. Realizations of this concept have succeeded at radar and at visible wavelengths.
The simplicity of his concepts together with their vast potential impact have exciting implications for the future Air Force and science in general.
On Oct. 26, we hosted a presentation by noted physicist Dr. Robert L. Byer from Stanford University as part of our 60th Anniversary celebration.
During the talk, Dr. Byer emphasized the importance of basic research to the laser effort, noting that no one realized the numerous applications and everyday utility of the laser when it was first demonstrated in 1960.
In the early days of laser research, and its forerunner, the maser, it was common for critics to dismiss these research efforts as “Means of Acquiring Support for Expensive Research.” But as Dr. Byer pointed out, lasers are a stealth utility–not visible to the general public but critical to everyday life. Without them we would not have electricity generation, Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation would cease, and we could not even check out items at the store register.
Lasers are critical not only to the commercial world, but to defense as well, and while we do not as yet have Starship Enterprise photon torpedoes, we do have lasers that safely and efficiently strip the paint from planes, help to repair the coatings on stealth aircraft, clean jet engine turbine blades and employ lasers for scanning aircraft for body integrity, to name just a few applications.
Dr. Byer predicted that laser scientists of future generations will produce applications that will be as dramatic as current laser accomplishments would seem to everyone sixty years ago when the laser was in its infancy.
Dr. Byer has conducted research and taught classes at Stanford University since 1969. He has made numerous contributions to laser science and technology including the demonstration of the first tunable visible parametric oscillator, and the development of the Q-switched unstable resonator Nd YAG laser. At present, he is developing nonlinear optical materials and laser diode pumped solid state laser sources for applications to gravitational wave detection and to laser particle acceleration.
