This morning, I’ll be standing in front of 20-30 people associated with local government and Navy at a meeting of the Regional Defense Partnership (formerly known as the Research Defense Partnership for the 21st century, or RDP-21) to talk about part of my sabbatical project with Fathomwerx.

This project aims to understand the structural options Fathomwerx has for including academia in its work. The solution we’ve settled on is to create an applied research institute at Cal State Channel Islands that will function in part as an institutional organ for Universtiy-Navy partnerships.

My presentation at RDP this morning will be the first time I’ve talked about this in public. It’s nerve wracking. Many people in that room will have opinions. I’ll work hard to keep my comments focused, leaving unsaid many things I’d like to have a conversation about with these folks.

We’re going to nod to an autonomy project that is likely to include this region. It will have a big economic impact that I think the region should be preparing to leverage.

The reason it might be coming here is the region has world-class expertise in autonomy. This expertise was described in this Forbes article that needs to get more attention, here.

We’ll also nod to the world’s longest running program in maritime exersizes, the ANTX-Coastal Trident program. Now that Alan Jaeger, the Fathomwerx director, is a delegate to NATO on autonomous systems, Coastal Trident will likely start having an international expression.

And speaking of international, Jaeger is in Portugal right now wearing his NATO hat, representing the U.S. at REPMUS, a program that has similarities to the autonomy project I linked to, above. This suggests that our local expertise in autonomy is being expressed globally. This is an opportunity for the region to build something to harness that for economic Good.

Here’s a link to the slide deck we’ll be using this morning: RDP Presentation