AARO and AUI Engage Academia in UAP Symposium

by Greg Bishop - Senior Correspondent

Vienna, VA (U.S.A.) From August 5–6, 2025, the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) and Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) convened a symposium at the AUI headquarters in Vienna, Virginia. The gathering brought together selected representatives from academia, scientists, and members of private research organizations to consider how UAP research might progress through greater collaboration. Focused primarily on challenges related to managing and analyzing UAP reports, topics ranged from data acquisition to qualitative and quantitative methods, and how to reconcile these into an operable repository that advances UAP studies.

This was the second in a series of AUI-hosted symposia. The first, organized by AUI with support from NSF took place May 15–16, 2024 with the theme of removing the stigma associated with communicating and educating about the UAP subject. The title of the prior symposium was “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP): A Dialogue on Science, Public Engagement and Communication.” That more of this stigma has evaporated in the intervening year reflects a shift in how institutions are beginning to engage the question of unresolved phenomena.

AARO was formally established on July 20, 2022, under the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security. Its mandate is to standardize “the collection, analysis, and resolution of reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) across all domains: air, sea, space, and transmedium” (for example, moving from air to sea.)

At a Congressional hearing in November 2024, Acting Director Dr. Jon T. Kosloski stated that “Only a very small percentage of reports AARO receives are potentially anomalous; these are the cases that require significant time, resources, and a focused scientific inquiry by AARO and its wide network of partners.” He added for the record that “It is important to underscore that, to date, AARO has discovered no verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity, or technology.” The statement caused a stir in Ufological circles, but for SUAPS founder Mike Cifone, who attended the Vienna meeting, the symposium nonetheless marked “a significant change in attitude” for science and particularly for a government organization. “AARO has emphasized their mission statement is to ‘resolve anomalies, not explore or speculate as to the origin of unknowns,’” Cifone noted.

Throughout the meeting, AARO director Kosloski emphasized that the mission of his office is to study UAP as a potential deficit in “domain awareness,” that is, to close gaps in understanding and identification of previously unknown objects and incursions. Any progress that can be gleaned from the outreach to experts typified by the symposium will be applied to development and refinement of instruments, systems, and theories that address the threat level of observed phenomena. The incidents and scenarios that remain unidentified are not concerning, and will remain primarily the province of NGO groups and individuals.

The military and defense communities have historically restricted access to UAP-related data, but this symposium suggested a different approach. According to Dr. Koslowski’s Congressional testimony from 2024, “Building partnerships across government, academia, industry, and with the public, is essential to the success of the office.” Organizers Dr. Tim Spuck of AUI and Dr. Gretchen Stahlman of Florida State University (who also co-organized the previous AUI conference) emphasized the role of private NGOs in shaping the field, with Spuck observing, “I think we are fighting years of secrecy, misinformation, disinformation and a lack of trust between stakeholders. We did not get here overnight, and it will take time, patience, and resources from all sides to build trust and confidence in our relationships.”

Stahlman added, “We wanted to ensure a productive mix of expertise and representation of UAP community organizations. We focused on recruiting civilian and government experts working in overlapping areas: AI and machine learning; UAP research and data; physical and natural sciences; information and data science; archives and records; analysis methods; cyberinfrastructure and computation; and human and social sciences.” The meeting was kept purposely small to “encourage open discussion and sharing of ideas among all participants.”

Underlining AARO’s outreach to the UAP community, the program began with a keynote from Robert Powell, a founder and board member of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU), who delivered a talk entitled “Setting the Stage: The Importance of Good UAP Data.” Powell said he presented on “UAP data quality and its related challenges,” focusing on ways researchers and organizations could “understand the history and work on the subject done to date; … the methodologies and nuances of the databases in existence; improve analysis of anecdotal databases by screening the reports using Natural Language Processing (NLP); improve and standardize the way anecdotal data is collected; and begin the collection of scientific data through automated detection systems.” He added that “the SCU believes that the best route to achieve a better scientific understanding of UAP is not through military and government organizations, but through scientific organizations such as SCU, SUAPS, the Galileo Project, and others, as well as academia,” though he acknowledged that “cooperation with government study groups would also prove fruitful.”

David Marler, founder and director of the National UFO Historical Records Center, emphasized the importance of maintaining continuity with historical research. “Many who were in attendance, despite having unique knowledge and skill sets, did not have a detailed knowledge of the historical nature of the phenomenon,” he said. “I am willing to work with any individual or group that is open to honestly examining the data we have assembled. Also, I feel that AARO is in a unique position to direct essential resources to better examine the UAP subject. Historically, civilian efforts have lacked these resources.”

Another NGO group was represented by Christian Stepien, Chief Technical Officer of the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), who described NUFORC’s history and its database of more than 180,000 sightings.

Other presentations highlighted scientific and technical approaches. Dr. Matthew Syzdagis, Associate Professor at the State University of New York at Albany, recounted his work with the UAPx group on instrumented data collection of anomalous aerial objects, recently published in Progress in Aerospace. He also spoke about future directions, including “material analyses of alleged crash parts, and the building of mini nuclear reactor ‘honey pots’ for UAP attraction,” noting that his talk was well received. Dr. Stephen Breuhl, presenting research co-authored with Dr. Beatriz Villaroel, discussed “transient star-like objects” that appeared and then disappeared in astronomical imagery from 1949–1957. He explained that these events “have a strong statistical link to above-ground nuclear testing and show some association with UAP observations by witnesses from the ground.”

The symposium also examined qualitative data and the role of human testimony. Amanda Focke, Head of Special Collections at Fondren Library/Rice University, which houses the Archives of the Impossible, cautioned against dismissing witness accounts as mere anecdotes, warning that this has often hindered understanding in reductionist approaches to UAP study. Stahlman moderated a panel featuring Focke on “Harmonizing Qualitative and Quantitative Perspectives,” where participants argued that integrating testimony with sensor data would likely yield unrecognized clues. Stahlman said, “Working with text data is a challenge across disciplines, and we were able to connect UAP researchers with non-UAP experts to discuss techniques, methods and technologies that can be leveraged to extract meaningful knowledge from diverse UAP reports and data sources.” Another panel focused on AI, featuring Syzdagis and machine learning specialists, and explored new methods for categorizing reports and designing questions for witnesses.

Focke added, “Qualitative data, such as drawings and narrative descriptions of contact with NHI have the capacity to provide context and deeper modes of inquiry around the UAP issue. While photographs, radar, and video are also crucial elements in the study of UAP, the reports by experiencers of communications, interactions, messages, types of beings, connections to consciousness must also be explored. They are the testimony of human beings as ‘sensors.’ Their reports deserve study at the same level as what we think of as the ‘nuts and bolts’ physical study of UAP sightings.”

Social scientist Ben Gibson of RAND presented on the geographic distribution of UAP reports across the United States. His preliminary findings suggested that “population density, air traffic infrastructure, and proximity to nuclear facilities are strong predictors of sightings, while military bases are associated with slightly fewer reports.” He also found “correlations with magnetic anomalies, rugged terrain, and seismic activity.”

Society for UAP Studies (SUAPS) director Mike Cifone delivered a paper titled “It’s All About Evidence – But What Is the Evidence? An Inquiry into the Problem of the UFO As a Subject of Scientific Research,” in which he pointed out that “the scientific study of UFOs has always labored under the difficulties faced by all evidence of a forensic nature: that it is incidental, unexpected (during the incident), and often circumstantial… this situation has confined scientific ‘ufology’ to the study of post-facto UFO case reports, rather than the UFO phenomenon itself.” He concluded that “the study of UAP is not just about identifying unknown objects; it is about refining both our understanding of what we take to be already known, and those guiding scientific methodologies themselves, when confronted with the truly anomalous—never forgetting that those very methods derive always from our prior orientation in the known.”

Attendee Peter Sforza, SUAPS Director of Research Programs, offered a perspective that captured the spirit of the symposium: “UAP studies offer a rare, paradigm-shifting lens: a truly unknown phenomenon that forces us to confront the limitations of our current scientific processes. At the AARO workshop, we did not speculate on ‘what’ UAP are; instead, we explored open, collaborative methods to handle diverse data sources, from sensor logs to human narratives. The meeting welcomed open discussion and interdisciplinary input. In my view, UAP research is as much about advancing our capacity for rigorous, reflexive science as it is about the phenomena themselves, and this offers a chance to evolve our methods, improve coordination, and fill the information void with credible, integrative analysis.”

Taken together, the Vienna meeting suggested a transition in UAP research culture: from secrecy toward transparency, from fragmentation toward integration, and from stigma toward cautious legitimacy. For SUAPS, the symposium reflected precisely the kind of collaborative engagement envisioned in the Society’s AURA/UPWARD framework, where historical archives, advanced instrumentation, and witness testimony are brought into structured dialogue. The next step lies in sustaining these new connections, ensuring that evidence—whether archival, instrumental, or experiential—is woven into a coherent and credible field of study.