AARO Releases Report on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP)

The U.S. Department of Defense recently released 2025 UAP Workshop: Narrative Data, Infrastructures, and Analysis. The report details key findings from the workshop conducted at AUI headquarters in August of 2025. The meeting gathered 40 participants from government, academia and independent research organizations, and focused on the challenges and opportunities of working with UAP narrative reports and related data sources. The workshop and report is a collaboration between the U.S. Department of Defense’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), Associated Universities Inc. (AUI), and Florida State University (FSU).

“Like any scientific endeavor, answering questions around UAP requires rigorous data collection, standardization, and analysis,” said Tim Spuck, AUI director of education and public engagement. “Currently the research which reviews military logs, reports and archival records, social media posts, civilian testimony, is often complicated by classification, translation, and retention barriers.”

Key findings of the report relate to overcoming such barriers, effective use of UAP data, and analysis methods, including the responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI). Actionable recommendations include the development of standardized metadata templates and the use of AI with human oversight, in addition to other improvements in data collection, collaboration, contextualization and preservation.

“We are grateful to AARO for their support and to our participants for making time to attend and share their knowledge and insights” said Dr. Gretchen Stahlman, FSU assistant professor and co-lead on the workshop. Stahlmen went on to say, “Beyond UAP reports, analyzing experiential narrative reports at scale is an interdisciplinary challenge, recently impacted by rapid developments in AI. This meeting of minds brought together perspectives from physical, social, medical and computational sciences to help bring UAP research to the cutting edge.”

This research builds upon a previous NSF-funded workshop held in 2024, “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP): A Dialogue on Science, Public Engagement and Communication”. The 2024 effort explored how we might best help the public apply a scientific lens to UAP through communication and education. The need for advanced tools and techniques to support data collection and analysis was a critical recommendation that emerged.

 Associated Universities Inc. is an independent, non-profit corporation founded in 1946 that specializes in design, building and managing cutting-edge research facilities and the development and implementation of innovative approaches to education, outreach and workforce development. Currently, AUI manages two U.S.-funded research and development centers: The National Science Foundation (NSF) National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and the NSF Green Bank Observatory (GBO). NRAO is the North American partner in the management of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile. In addition, NRAO includes the Very Large Array (VLA), and the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), and GBO is home to the 100-meter Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope.

Contact:
Tim Spuck
Director of Education and Public Engagement, AUI
[email protected]