Serendipitous Science: ONR Global Reverse Engineers the Search for New Technology

Seeking out new technology or exciting ideas at Office of Naval Research Global (ONR Global) is something of a treasure hunt. 

Dr. Scott Walper , science director, ONR Global, says the search for innovative projects can take him and his team of program officers all over the world, relying on a bit of luck — or serendipity — to strike gold. But recently, Walper said he and his predecessor for Synthetic Biology at ONR Global, Dr. Patrick P. Rose , who is now with SPRIND - Bundesagentur für Sprunginnovationen (Germany’s Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation) had an idea to try something a little different.

Walper said, “The thought was we would put out a call for a ‘ Serendipity Collective ,’ where we would sponsor a workshop and ask people to tell us their craziest ideas”.

To attract innovators, the team worked with the company Ideateplus . Walper said Kevin D'Silva , IdeatePlus CEO, and his team were instrumental in helping develop and manage the event, setting up a web-based platform to crowdsource and push out a social media campaign.

“This was done a lot through our network on LinkedIn to spread the word — to say send your ideas to this website. Then we allowed teams to kind of form organically around these ideas,” he said.

Rose, who was lead ONR Global science director before moving to SPRIND, said it was a team effort involving several other entities from government and industry.

“This project is something where we were truly able to make a difference as a team. I was proud for initiating this project,” Rose said. “It was also one of the most prominent German American activities ONR Global has led.”

Both Rose and Walper also give credit to Jonathon Brame from U.S. Army DEVCOM for his leadership and sponsorship. Dr. Rhett Jefferies , technical director, ONR Global and Dr. Martina Siwek , regional chief scientist and ONR Global science director in Prague, also played major roles in bringing about this unique brainstorming event.

The website generated 73 concepts from more than 225 active participants. The information was collected and shared it with a team of experts, including an artist, engineer, scientist and someone from the humanities. The experts scored proposals based on originality and feasibility. Eight teams were then invited to the “Serendipity Collective” held in Berlin in May.

“So, at this point, we now have multinational teams that kind of evolved or formed around a core concept,” said Walper.

From those core concepts, another panel of experts composed of representatives from ONR Global, DEVCOM, VolkswagenStiftung (the Volkswagen Foundation) and SPRIND picked the ones they wanted to sponsor with an award of $50,000 to kick-start their efforts.

Walper said, “The hope is that over the next couple of months, they will further evolve their concepts and send us a proposal. So it’s a very different way of doing business for us, for ONR Global.”

The Serendipity Collective gave three funding awards — one to a team from the Baltics developing a novel ability to monitor brain waves. This particular team had been developing the Brain-Computer Music Interface (BCMI) system, enabling a musician to control musical and visual media using their EEG signals.

The second winning team is from Serbia and Slovenia, and is exploring new ways to evolve cognitive machines — training artificial intelligence (AI) outside of huge data sets that would allow it to develop a subjective understanding of the environment.

“It’s like how do you convert biological signals and environmental signals into something that can train a machine, so that it essentially teaches itself and learns from itself without these massive datasets that are currently required.”

The third team has what Walper calls a little more far-out concept: looking at biological signals from plants, which communicate through a series of chemical and electrical signals that can be relayed over tens or hundreds of miles.

“There’s been some research of late in finding ways to monitor these signals and then convert them into an electrical signal. So a sensor network essentially,” said Walper.

The three startup teams will be evaluated for their progress with a report and expectations of a demonstration by the end of this year. Beyond funding the three winning teams, the “Serendipity Collective” also identified several groups whose technology was a little more advanced, so they were connected directly with programs within the Naval Research Enterprise and United States Department of Defense .

For a first-time effort, the “Serendipity Collective” surpassed expectations by building a greater international awareness of ONR Global through its community engagement, reaching 1,500 unique visitors on the website alone from 63 different countries.