Director’s
Message

Defending
the Nation

From the seas to the skies, cyberspace, and deep space, the challenges facing U.S. forces today span every domain. Whether enabling rapid planning for fleet protection, strengthening air and missile defenses, or advancing electronic warfare capabilities, APL applies deep technical expertise to design, integrate, prototype, and accelerate capabilities that help the nation anticipate threats and act decisively — making critical contributions toward a more agile, resilient, and integrated national defense posture.

Countering
Evolving
Threats

Innovation and technology are reshaping the nature of competition and conflict, blurring the boundaries between physical, digital, and biological threats. APL fuels the nation’s ability to stay ahead of these shifts by identifying vulnerabilities and developing solutions that strengthen security, defense, and resilience. From hypersonics and autonomy to biotechnology and infrastructure protection, the Laboratory is integrating science, engineering, and analysis to anticipate and counter tomorrow’s threats today.

Accelerating
Progress
Through
Partnerships

Today’s national security challenges demand rapid innovation, a call APL is answering by actively engaging commercial partners from across industries to identify and leverage their capabilities, manufacturing capacity, and cutting-edge research — while remaining an independent, trusted partner to the government. By combining its deep technical expertise and mission understanding with industry’s ability to rapidly scale emerging capabilities, APL helps bridge the gap between early-stage research and accelerating operationally relevant solutions.

Bold
Innovation

APL is redefining how artificial intelligence (AI), materials, manufacturing, and biology accelerate innovation for national defense and beyond. Through forward-leaning research, Laboratory researchers are exploring bold new concepts that may not reach the field immediately but are critical in shaping what comes next. By laying the groundwork for more resilient systems, faster innovation cycles, and transformative capabilities, APL is advancing the most innovative and effective technologies into real-world application and strengthening the nation’s technological advantage.

Exploring
The Extremes

APL’s mission to solve complex challenges drives discoveries across extreme frontiers — from the blazing atmosphere of the Sun to the deepest Arctic oceans and the icy moons of the outer solar system. APL spacecraft, sensors, and scientific instruments are revealing how solar physics and space weather impact our world, while parallel efforts on Earth are shaping technologies to sustain human and robotic exploration and operations in extreme environments.

A Culture
of Innovation

From incubating bold research proposals and developing the next generation of leaders to building collaborative workspaces, APL fuels creativity and novel ideas at every level.

Tech
Transfer

With a large portfolio of cutting-edge intellectual property and a team of experienced licensing staff, APL’s Tech Transfer offers streamlined access to technological innovations made at the Laboratory.

University
Collaborations

APL’s strategic collaborations with other Johns Hopkins University (JHU) divisions strengthen the Lab’s ability to tackle the nation’s most complex technical challenges. Working alongside university researchers, faculty, and students, APL experts transform foundational research into real-world solutions while providing technical and strategic guidance at the intersection of academia, industry, and government. These partnerships leverage the expertise of a world-class research institution to accelerate innovation, educate the current and future workforce, and develop impactful technologies that address national priorities.

Awards
and Honors

Tech
Transfer

APL physicist Claire Trop surveys a low‑SWaP (size, weight, and power) atmospheric‑turbulence detector, a portable tool she helped develop that maps invisible eddies to help warfighters fine‑tune lasers, sensors, and communications for high‑energy weapons and counter‑UAS (unmanned aerial system) missions.

With a large portfolio of cutting-edge intellectual property and a team of experienced licensing staff, APL’s Tech Transfer offers streamlined access to technological innovations made at the Laboratory.

Intellectual Property and Patents

Since Tech Transfer was established in 1999, APL has logged more than 8,700 IP disclosures and executed over 1,100 license and other like agreements.

In FY 2025:

597

IP disclosures received

22

U.S. patents issued

101

Licenses and agreements

145

Commercialized products

The Innovation Life Cycle: Research to Application

Tech Transfer drives game-changing impact by responsibly transferring knowledge and technology, partnering strategically, and discovering external advances that complement APL’s mission. Here are three projects that showcase Tech Transfer’s collaboration with innovators and programs through three pathways: transfer, partner, and discover.

Transfer. With strategic investment from Tech Transfer, senior APL chemist Kelly Van Houten and her team created a proof of concept for a color-changing test strip to signal the presence of any fentanyl analog instantly. Tech Transfer then licensed the technology to a U.S. company that is now evaluating the strip’s commercial viability.

Partner. Over the past 25 years, APL’s Frontier Radio has been used on space missions exploring regions from the Sun to Mars and beyond, including NASA’s Europa Clipper and Parker Solar Probe missions. Tech Transfer facilitated a commercial license and five-year master service agreement with Rocket Lab in 2020. Today, Rocket Lab builds the electronics for the technology, while the Lab supports software updates. This collaboration has reduced system costs and delivery timelines by a factor of 10, accelerating the path from the Lab to orbit from three years to less than six months.

Discover. Through a strategic collaboration with Microsoft, APL researchers are advancing the application of artificial intelligence (AI) across multiple domains. One effort applies AI and scene-mapping technologies to transform robots from requiring many commands into autonomous teammates capable of planning, coordinating, and executing missions in disaster response and battlefield environments leveraging Microsoft’s Azure platform. In addition, APL is leveraging its expertise in closed-loop discovery of novel superconductors to collaboratively investigate whether Microsoft’s MatterGen generative AI tool can predict, make, and measure novel oxide superconducting materials. This capability could be further evolved to create designer materials to meet specific perform­ance needs, reduce reliance on rare earth elements, or provide alternatives to critical materials that are vulnerable to supply chain disruptions.

2025 APL Start-Ups: Accelerating Commercial Pathways

Nuquantic is advancing environmental monitoring technologies through a partnership with Early Charm, an incubator of start-up companies based in Baltimore, Maryland. Nuquantic licensed APL’s portable environmental DNA (eDNA) filtration system and, with APL Tech Transfer’s support, secured a $300,000 Maryland Innovation Initiative award from the Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO) to accelerate commercialization.

BIOPAC Medical Systems LP is working a novel neural blockade monitoring device to improve real-time assessment of regional anesthetic effectiveness. The company stems from a licensing partnership between APL, Johns Hopkins Medicine, BLOCKsynop, Inc., and BIOPAC Systems and builds on APL-originated neural block monitoring technology developed by former APL engineer Wayne Sternberger. To accelerate commercialization and clinical translation, the venture has support from the Maryland Innovation Initiative and with a National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Research grant.

Deep Root Biolabs is commercializing a patent-pending platform that integrates plant and microbial systems for sustainable agriculture by strengthening soil health and increasing crop resilience, environmental remediation, and critical mineral recovery. Founded by former APL researcher John Sittmann, the company translates fundamental biological processes into practical, scalable solutions.

Program Spotlight: Archimedes Award

John Sittmann, founder of Deep Root Biolabs, and APL Director David M. Van Wie. Sittmann is the third Archimedes Award recipient and was presented with the award in October 2025.

Launched in 2019 by APL’s Tech Transfer, the Archimedes Award promotes entrepreneurship and accelerates the commercialization of Laboratory technology. Each year, up to two recipients are selected to receive two years of office and lab space at Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures’ FastForward innovation hubs, along with a package of medical and other benefits for the same time period. The recipient in 2025 was John Sittmann.