November 18, 2004
Applied Physics Lab is number one recipient of defense department dollars
While President Bush and Sen. John Kerry were weighing the wisdom of engaging in conflicts around the world during the final days of the presidential campaign, directors of 12 university-based laboratories receiving about a billion dollars a year in Department of Defense funding were meeting at the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory.
Only the second such summit ever, the directors of these secretary of defense- designated research and development laboratories were here “to share science and technology developments and to plan for future needs that will benefit uniformed military personnel abroad and secure coastal waters and airspace at home,” according to Jeffrey Simmen, director of the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory.
With $40 million annually in federal grants and contracts and no state money, the Applied Physics Laboratory is the UW’s number one recipient of Department of Defense dollars and the campus’s largest contributor to research and development addressing national defense and security needs.
“Any time troops are deployed, it is important for them to have the latest technology for such things as surveillance, sensing, information management, reliable power and defense against chemical and biological attacks,” Simmen says.
“Just what technologies bring about tomorrow’s operational advantage?” asked Robert Baker, deputy director of plans and programs for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, as he urged the directors to envision what technologies will be needed to operate effectively in the next 10 to 20 years.
A wide variety of research and development efforts addressing critical defense and homeland security needs were discussed during the Seattle meeting including:
- The Navy, Coast Guard and waterfront police patrols needing to “see” into the water. The UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory has developed unmanned and autonomous underwater vehicles that can patrol for long periods and sonar devices that give acoustic images at high resolutions. These high-definition sonars are small enough for divers to hold in their hands. Or they can be mounted on yard-long underwater vehicles that can scan harbors and seaports for sea floor mines, or on remotely operated vehicles to inspect ship hulls and piers for explosives and detect divers in areas where they don’t belong.
- The training program “Virtual Dilemma” developed at the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California, uses a video game-like program to teach critical thinking. In the demonstration scenario, a vehicle in a detachment that’s needed immediately across town has struck a boy. A military trainee interacts with the program and is faced with decisions about offering aid, getting to where the detachment is needed, dealing with the boy’s mother and a gathering crowd of potentially hostile citizens.
- Soldiers wounded on the battlefield often have only an hour in which they either receive treatment or die because of uncontrolled bleeding. World-renowned researchers at the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory are leading campus efforts to develop high-intensity, focused ultrasound techniques and instruments with the promise of one day being carried by medics into the field. Intensely focused ultrasound produces temperatures of 100 C in the body, causing blood to coagulate and tissue cuts and tears to fuse. High intensity focused ultrasound can even work through the skin if there is internal bleeding, and one day medics may be using an almost Star Trek-like device on the battlefield.
The UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory is the second oldest university-affiliated research center, having been established in 1943, and is currently in the top third of the laboratories in federal funding received. The largest research center is the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University.
“Each university-affiliated research center has a key set of core competencies defining it,” Simmen says. “Each one, including the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory, can be considered to be the world’s best – or among the best – performers in those core competencies. We’re known internationally as a premier center for acoustics research and development, ocean physics and engineering, and Arctic research and instrumentation.
“We have new national defense and homeland security initiatives under way to develop networked and mobile surveillance systems for fleet and coastal security, compact and high-bandwidth photonic devices for improved sensing and tools to help the Navy mitigate sonar impact on marine mammals.”
“These university-affiliated research centers do the work that is difficult for industry research groups,” according to David Sivillo, deputy director of the Navy University Affiliated Research Centers Office. “Industry must concentrate efforts in terms of maximum profit and maximum market,” he says. Basic oceanographic research, for example, would not be feasible for industry, yet the Navy needs to understand the forces at work in the oceans because it conducts operations there.
In connection with industry, “The university-affiliated labs also are our trusted agents to advise us on what’s available commercially that can serve us well,” says Tom Neuberger, with the Navy University Affiliated Research Centers Office.
Both Sivillo and Neuberger said the universities are the training grounds for the next generation of applied scientists. The UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory, for example, currently supervises 68 graduate and undergraduate students.
Funding for Department of Defense research and development has increased steadily in recent years. During the last fiscal year Congress appropriated even more money to some branches than had been requested.
Besides the Applied Physics Laboratory, several other units on the UW campus receive Department of Defense money, including those with expertise in engineering, computer science, chemistry and environmental and health sciences.
“Our funding at the Applied Physics Laboratory has increased by almost
30 percent in recent years and could easily increase by an additional 20 percent next year alone from applied research,” Simmen says.
The Applied Physics Laboratory leverages Department of Defense money when possible, obtaining money from other federal agencies with similar research interests, according to William Bakamis, Applied Physics Laboratory’s associate director. The laboratory, for example, received $9.3 million last year for oceanographic and polar research from the National Science Foundation, which makes it the second-largest recipient of NSF funding on campus among individual units.
Annual grant and contract funding to the Applied Physics Laboratory exceeds external research funding for every UW school or college except four: medicine, arts and sciences, public health and community medicine, and engineering.
