Study for U.S. Air Force Research Lab tracks impact of ketones on pilot ventilation

Military aviators breathe rarefied air — figuratively and literally.

They operate elite aircraft at altitude in stressful conditions with protections in place to ensure that the atmosphere they breathe in flight helps ensure their physical and cognitive performance doesn’t suffer in the extreme conditions they are asked to navigate.

Finding ways to ensure proper ventilation in pilots is what underlies an ongoing research project at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition sponsored by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory. It aims to assess the effects of exogenous ketones on operator ventilation.

“When you’re dealing with these oxygen delivery systems in the aircraft, typically the failures are intermittent,” says Research Scientist Dr. David Morris, part of the study team led by Senior Research Scientist Dr. Jeff Phillips. “It’s not total failure of the system, but because of the way they’re designed, you can get reductions in oxygen flow from time to time for periods of time.”

For nearly two decades, unexplained physiological episodes (UPEs) have been a challenge to aviators. Studies have identified a few factors that may play a role in UPEs:

  • Hypobaria (low ambient pressures)
  • Breathing hyperoxic (high oxygen level) gas
  • Obstructive breathing resistance
  • Hypocapnia (low blood carbon dioxide levels) associated with hypobaria, hyperoxia, and breathing resistance.

Military aviators wear oxygen masks that allow them to breathe hyperoxic air, a standard operating strategy that provides adequate oxygen in flight and protects against decompression sickness in case of sudden depressurization of the aircraft.

Breathing this hyperoxic air causes hyperventilation, breathing out more carbon dioxide than the body produces. Since carbon dioxide helps regulate blood flow to the brain, a deficit of it in the bloodstream can reduce blood flow to the brain. It also raises your blood’s pH which makes the affinity of oxygen to hemoglobin so high that the oxygen doesn’t get released from the red blood cells to get to the actual tissue to support metabolic processes. Paradoxically, breathing hyperoxic gas may result in reduced oxygen delivery to the brain and lead to a UPE.

The hypothesis for the ongoing IHMC study is that drinking exogenous ketones will lower the body’s pH and increase metabolic production of carbon dioxide when compared to a placebo and mitigate the potential impacts on aviators’ physiology.

The early results are promising.

“We believe that this could be a way to help make our aviators safer and offer them some metabolic protection, if you will, from the effects of hypocapnia at altitude,” Morris says. “By helping maintain carbon dioxide levels in the blood, we hope that we can offer a buffer for aviators to help protect them against possible UPEs.”

Morris says that participants on the ketones were able to maintain more normal breathing. On the placebo, participants’ breathing just stayed flat even after they transition from hyperoxia to hypoxia and their blood oxygen levels dropped.

“On the ketones, not only did they maintain higher ventilation volumes during hypoxia, that hypoxic ventilatory response happened almost immediately. On the carbohydrates, it was delayed,” Morris says.

The findings could be applicable to other warfighters who work at altitude as well as have impacts mitigating the risk of frostbite and freeze-related injuries.

“From a physical standpoint, if you have more oxygen in the blood, typically you’re going to maintain better blood flow to your fingers and toes, especially in cold environments” Morris says.

Some evidence also suggests that exogenous ketones may help to alleviate a condition known as hypoxic pulmonary vasoconstriction.

In this condition, the blood vessels in the lungs constrict in response to hypoxia which causes the blood pressure in the lungs to rise. This causes a couple of problems. In the short term, fluid is forced from the bloodstream and into the lungs, causing a potentially deadly condition known as high-altitude pulmonary edema.

If the person’s hypoxia is caused by a chronic lung disease such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the pulmonary hypertension can become chronic and lead to heart failure.

“We’re currently looking for funding to pursue this line of research,” Phillips says. “We think the possibilities are exciting.”

National Institute on Aging funded study tracks changes to gait as we age

Some people call it “walking on ice”— the careful steps and slower pace that older people take on when they walk.

Biomechanically it is a way to prioritize stability over economy — we slow down to decrease the chances we will fall and use our hips more than we use our ankles.

But “walking on ice” costs our bodies more metabolically and reduces walking speed, both of which have downstream consequences for healthspan. Learning more about that intersection is the heart of a recent award by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) to Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) researchers Dr. Greg Sawicki and Dr. Zach Graham.

Research Scientist Dr. Zachary Graham

The $3.2 million award, run through Sawicki’s lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition in Pensacola will focus on Identifying Multi-Scale Mechanisms for Age-Related Increase in Metabolic Cost of Walking (ID-MET).

“Mobility serves as a surrogate for well-being with age-related limits to walking function that include increased energy cost and decreased speed,” says Graham. “We want to understand more about how multiple systems interact as we age.”

Sawicki, whose home-base is the Human Physiology of Wearable Robotics Laboratory at Georgia Tech, was part of an expert panel convened by the NIA in 2021 to identify gaps in our knowledge about why mobility declines as we age. From that gathering, a key age-related difference in walking function emerged — the source of mechanical power generated by muscles to walk is redistributed within the leg from ankles to hips.

Scientists refer to this as the ‘distal-to-proximal shift, Graham says.

Senior Research Scientist Greg Sawicki

The goal of the IHMC study is to take a multi-scale approach to understanding the causes and consequences of that shift.

“We’ve pulled together a strong team that will combine traditional whole-body and joint-level biomechanics with tissue-level physiological data — including molecular analysis of key locomotor muscles — to understand the full cascade of age-related changes contributing to slow, effortful walking,” Sawicki says.

Data suggest walking function begin to sharply decline at age 60. This cross-sectional observational study will shed light on how this phenomenon plays out in the body and ultimately will aid in design of more effective interventions to keep us all walking vigorously into our 80’s and beyond.

“I look forward to connecting our sites with other study sites at Johns Hopkins and UMass-Amherst to share data and insights and make them available to other scientists, clinicians and engineers for maximum impact.” Sawicki says.

If you are interested in being a participant in this study, visit our study participation page to learn more.

Graham is the featured speaker at the Dec. 4, 2025 Evening Lecture on IHMC’s Pensacola campus. To reserver your seat for that lecture, which will include an overview of this study, click here.

IHMC is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System where researchers pioneer science and technology aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. IHMC researchers and staff collaborate extensively with the government, industry and academia to help develop breakthrough technologies. IHMC research partners have included: DARPA, the National Science Foundation, NASA, Army, Navy, Air Force, National Institutes of Health, IBM, Microsoft, Honda, Boeing, Lockheed, and many others.

Meet Alex, IHMC’s next generation humanoid robot

Alex is going out into the world.

The Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition’s newly developed robot is the latest chapter in IHMC’s long history of excellence and innovation in the field of humanoid robotics. It takes the lessons of years of work on integrated controls and behaviors as well as in-house hardware design to prioritize out-of-the-lab testing and experimentation.

Alex is a multi-year, multimillion dollar project funded through the Office of Naval Research (ONR). It builds upon the design work the Robotics team did on Nadia, a humanoid that advanced the genre — and gained YouTube notoriety playing ping pong and boxing.

Nadia’s proficiency with behavior, decision-making, push-recovery and more in the lab informed the team’s work moving forward.  Nadia was a rich testbed not only for the structural specifications of the humanoid — from joints to actuators — but also for the software that drives behavior capabilities, perception sensing, virtual reality teleoperation, and more.

Senior Research Scientist Dr. Robert Griffin leads the Alex team. Their work is featured in the latest edition of IHMC’s newsletter, available now.

“The idea is to really start pushing the robot to go outside of the lab and develop it into a system that we can take places and test what we’ve developed.” Griffin says.

The research goals enabled by the ONR funding include design and integration of next-generation controllers for outdoor urban operations, enhanced design of behaviors for building exploration, integration of a behavior cloning pipeline, and improved simulation environment.

The goal is for Alex and its successors to be hardy and nimble enough ultimately to operate in extreme environments where the risk to human responders is high, from military scenarios to disaster response.

A key innovation in Alex is the high-powered custom actuators, which significantly drop the humanoid’s weight compared to Nadia, which weighed about 100 kilograms. The estimate is that Alex will weigh 85 kilograms with a battery.

“Long-term, we think we can make the body itself a lot lighter, allowing us to really focus on high speed and performance,” Griffin says.

The capabilities that allow humanoids like Alex to act as deeply integrated team members in a squad also could translate to other scenarios. Maneuverability, durability, autonomy and search skills can allow Alex to serve as a human avatar first-responder in disaster situations, keeping emergency personnel in relative safety.

“We think Alex will help advance the abilities of humanoids and their speed of operation, with the goal of achieving human-level speeds so that robots can keep up with the tempo of real-world operations,” Griffin says.

Decades of AI-expertise fuel growth of National Center for Collaborative Autonomy

Recent military conflicts around the world have underscored the growing importance of autonomous systems, including drones, in modern warfare.

In the civilian world, the impact of autonomous systems is equally profound and is expected to grow dramatically. Collaborative autonomy will enable everything from self-driving vehicles to space exploration and much more.

Controlling and coordinating these interconnected human-machine systems, and maximizing their utility and efficacy in the air, on land, underwater, and even in space, will be critical to protecting the nation’s security and economic interests.

An award secured by the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) has the Institute poised to continue to be a leader of this initiative, creating a center of research excellence in cooperative human-machine teaming, a research area focused on optimizing the ability of these systems to work together with humans.

The National Center for Collaborative Autonomy (NCCA) leverages and expands IHMC’s internationally recognized expertise in AI and autonomous systems, human-machine teaming, communications networking, collaborative federated multidomain autonomy in uncertain communication environments, human factors, and related disciplines. The story is highlighted in the most recent edition of the IHMC newsletter, available now.

Dr. Niranjan Suri is part of the team leading the growth of the National Center for Collaborative Autonomy at IHMC.

Dr. Niranjan Suri is part of the team leading the growth of the National Center for Collaborative Autonomy at IHMC.

This $6.7 million award from the Triumph Gulf Coast Board will establish and support multiple areas of research, add technology-centered jobs to the regional economy, and advance innovation in the Northwest Florida region.

Triumph is the nonprofit corporation funded by a legal settlement with BP following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Its purpose is to seed projects that will transform the regional economy. The NCCA is poised to do just that, says Dr. Morley Stone, IHMC’s Chief Executive Officer.

“The National Center for Collaborative Autonomy could have a generational impact not only on the regional economy, but also on military response, disaster response, and much more,” Stone says. “Improving the way humans and machines learn and team together is one of our foundational pillars. No one knows more about this work than the IHMC team. This award will allow us to elevate the research that we do in order to get the maximum benefit for our national security and first responder communities.

“Triumph Gulf Coast is once again making a significant investment in IHMC and in the future of this region as a center of excellence in science and technology,” Stone says.

THE FUTURE OF WARFARE — AND MORE

Momentum for the Center comes at a time when it is increasingly clear that unmanned aerial vehicles are changing the future of warfighting dramatically. Dr. Niranjan Suri, IHMC’s Associate Director, says the war in Ukraine shows this starkly.

“The practice of warfare is fundamentally changed by what we see in Ukraine in the use of drones,” he says. “And we know that our adversaries know this as well. The only way to scale this up is to have autonomy, but autonomy of a single platform is not sufficient. We need all of these platforms to start collaborating with each other.”

Where in the past one unmanned aerial vehicle was controlled by one operator, future strategies will mean moving away from that 1-1 ratio toward systems that allow individual operators to manage multiple UAVs — and that will require even larger groups of UAVs to be able to communicate and collaborate among each other.

Dr. Matt Johnson

The NCCA’s work will also draw upon research into reasoning under uncertainty and teaming intelligence, both areas where IHMC has deep expertise. Dr. Matt Johnson has decades of experience in making human-machine teams more flexible, resilient and effective.

“The NCCA is partly focused on the scaling problem,” Johnson says. “In order to get more bang for your buck (these robotic systems) you need them to do things autonomously and to do that, they need to be able to see the world for themselves and be able to interpret what they’re seeing, and they need to be able to make their own decisions. All of that should be in the context of a human directed goal,” Johnson says. If you don’t, one-to-one control is going to be your limit and that’s just not very useful.”

While military application is a primary initial focus, other applications for robust collaborative autonomous systems include disaster relief and other civilian applications.

Suri says collaborative autonomy will enable a fleet of vehicles surveying from the air and land to assess damage to infrastructure, enhance situation awareness and support logistics for relief efforts after a natural disaster — in a fraction of the time it would take boots on the ground to accomplish the same thing.

“It will allow us to know what has happened, where is the highest-priority need, and what do we need to do. We feel that collaborative autonomy will play a major role in that kind of disaster response scenarios,” Suri says.

The region’s substantial military research presence will be an important contributor to the NCCA’s development and sustained success. Northwest Florida is home to the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory at Eglin Air Force Base, Special Operations Command at Hurlburt Field, and the Navy Surface Warfare Center in Panama City, among others.

The NCCA also enhances a unique academic training opportunity thanks to IHMC’s partnership with the University of West Florida in the joint Intelligent Systems and Robotics Ph.D. program.

The NCCA also will bring together national partners with interests related to collaborative autonomy to help accelerate progress in the domain.

Johnson says that IHMC will host workshops to bring the leading experts in the field together to brainstorm and provide a vision for the future of collaborative autonomy.

A major goal is to demonstrate the value of Collaborative Autonomy and to foster future government programs that enhance U.S. capabilities with the NCCA partners leading the way, Johnson says.

“We are bringing together, of course, our expertise in robotics, AI, human-machine teaming and other traditional IHMC research areas,” Suri says. “This is, at its heart, a big part of what IHMC does. A new challenge comes up. We find what expertise we can draw on to help address the challenge. We assemble the team, and we go.”

Entrepreneurs, researchers find opportunity at Northwest Florida Pitch Day

Published 11.10.25

Innovation has always had a home at IHMC and a partnership with Space Florida created another opportunity to showcase that.

For the second year, the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition’s Pensacola campus hosted The Takeoff: Northwest Florida Pitch Day with partners Space Florida, Gain Venture Capital, and DeepWork Capital.

Pitch Day connects market-ready research and startups in the region with investors, accelerating their path to commercialization and scaling groundbreaking technology. Dr. Morley Stone, IHMC’s Chief Executive Officer, said the Institute was proud to co-host Pitch Day again.

IHMC researchers Daniel Duran and Dr. Niranjan Suri present their research to attendees of the 2025 Space Florida The Takeoff event. Photo Credit IHMC © all rights reserved

“Initiatives like The Takeoff unite innovators, investors, and business leaders to accelerate the commercialization of breakthrough technologies,” Stone says. “This year’s event highlighted IHMC’s expanding portfolio of commercialization efforts and reaffirmed Florida’s position as a national leader in technology, investment, and entrepreneurship—driving innovation that shapes the future.”

The IHMC researchers who presented were:

Senior Research Associate Daniel Duran highlighted The Modular IoT Networked Technology (MINT) Threat Detection System, which delivers scalable, multilayered defense and enhanced situational awareness through a distributed network of minimal SWaP-C Threat Detection Boxes. These versatile, low-cost units detect and analyze a wide range of threats — including perimeter intrusion and tampering, acoustic and seismic activity, and more in real time with geolocation and interfaced with decision software used by military and law enforcement communities. Each self-contained box leverages AI for instant analysis and communicates securely through long-range, encrypted meshing.

Dr. Matt Johnson presented Crucible, an immersive simulation and testing environment for exploring, validating, and refining complex human–machine interactions within virtual and mixed-reality environments. Crucible enables realistic mission scenarios, system integration, and performance measurement across physical, virtual, and cognitive dimensions. This helps accelerate the pace of discovery, testing, and deployment of advanced human–machine teaming concepts.

Research Scientist Jared Li showed Link, a multipurpose exoskeleton platform designed to reduce injury risk during dynamic, dangerous manual labor and is the latest evolution of IHMC’s exoskeleton work. Modular by design, Link features the ability to assist a single joint (hips only) and/or multiple joints (hip-knee) through custom actuator packages that can be “linked” together through instrumented carbon fiber structures. Whether reducing work-related injuries, or improving the independence of older adults, Link’s mission is to maintain mobility for all.

The private sector presenters who earned awards were:

Apellix, a Jacksonville, Fla., based company that designs, builds, and sells AI-driven commercial, industrial and military drones. Apellix featured drones that work at elevation, including power washing and spray painting drones. It is part of the company’s goals to eliminate risk to people working at heights and improving worker safety.

National Energy USA, a Pensacola-based company that works with government, commercial, and municipal clients to solve issues around waste management and power generation. National Energy delivers a waste-powered microgrid using artificial intelligence and machine-learning robots to process a variety of waste streams into clean, renewable energy for clients.

Swarm Dynamics, a Fort Walton Beach-based company that is producing modular “SwarmCenter” micro-factories that combine robotics cells, proprietary composites, and digital-thread automation to create defense manufacturing systems capable of printing airframes, hulls, munitions, toroidal propellers, and more. Swarm aims to bridge defense and commercial production to ensure scalable production for the U.S.’s autonomous industrial base.

‍Space Florida’s Chief Executive Officer Rob Long says The Takeoff shows how innovation is thriving across Florida.

“By linking entrepreneurs and investors, we’re creating new opportunities for high-tech growth and reinforcing Florida’s position as a leader in aerospace and advanced technologies,” Long says.

Kelly Reeser, managing partner at Gain Venture Capital, added: “As a firm proudly headquartered in Northwest Florida, Gain Venture Capital is deeply committed to fueling innovation right here at home. The Takeoff reflects our belief that world-class companies can — and should— grow from this region.”

IHMC is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System where researchers pioneer science and technology aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. IHMC researchers and staff collaborate extensively with the government, industry and academia to help develop breakthrough technologies. IHMC research partners have included: DARPA, the National Science Foundation, NASA, Army, Navy, Air Force, National Institutes of Health, IBM, Microsoft, Honda, Boeing, Lockheed, and many others.

IHMC honored by Humanoid Robotics Technology as Outstanding Research Organization

The Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) is once again in the international spotlight in the field of humanoid robotics.

The Institute was named Outstanding Research Organization in the 2025 Humanoid Robotics Industry Awards for its Nadia humanoid project. The awards are sponsored by Humanoid Robotics Technology (HRT) in partnership with Novanta.

Dr. Morley Stone, IHMC’s Chief Executive Officer, was thrilled that the team was recognized in this way — among competition such as the University of California at San Diego, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California at Berkley, Standford University, Shanghai Tech University, the Instituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Harbin Institute of Technology, Peking University, and ETH Zurich.

The IHMC Robotics team in the Levin Center for IHMC Research.

“IHMC is indeed a special place, where researchers work together across numerous disciplines every day to push the envelope in terms of what is possible in humanoid robotics and teaming,” Stone says. “To have the worldwide humanoid community recognize us and our work is an honor.”

Humanoid Robotics Technology is a website dedicated to industry news in humanoid robotics. The Outstanding Research Organization Award honors organizations that deliver research that significantly advances the field, includes community engagement and outreach to raise awareness of the benefits of humanoids in society, and pioneer new humanoid platforms, says Jack Hallewell, co-founder of HRT.

Nadia’s range of motion and high power-to-weight ratio is one of the design elements that makes the humanoid unique in the field. The robot’s namesake is famed gymnast Nadia Comăneci, as a nod to the ultimate design goal — achieving human-range-of-motion. IHMC’s Nadia gained internet notoriety in for videos showing her boxing and playing ping pong.

The HRT team said of Nadia and IHMC in the nomination:

Researchers at IHMC developed Anticipatory and Adaptive Footstep Streaming for Teleoperated Bipedal Robots. It retargets user steps to robot footstep locations, allowing the robot to utilise its own dynamics for locomotion, ensuring better balance and stability. The method anticipates user footsteps to minimise delays between when the user initiates and completes a step and when the robot does it. Additionally, the system autonomously adjusts the robot’s steps to account for its surrounding terrain, overcoming challenges posed by environmental mismatches between the user’s flat-ground setup and the robot’s uneven terrain.  

“It’s a deep honor to have our Nadia project be recognized in this way,” says Senior Research Scientist Dr. Robert Griffin, who leads the robotics team at IHMC. “IHMC has always prided itself on its research contributions to the field and watching the evolution of humanoids as a discipline and industry from the time Nadia started in 2018 and 2019 to 2025 has been nothing short of astonishing.”

“We’re quite excited for the recognition of our project’s contribution to this revolution and are excited to see what the future holds, both for humanoids at large and for our future contributions to the field.”

The Nadia platform, which was retired in the fall of 2025 to make way for IHMC’s next generation platform named Alex, aimed to develop highly mobile ground robots that can function in indoor environments where stairs, ladders, and debris would require the same range of motion as a human.

As mentioned, Alex, IHMC’s next iteration humanoid, is under development supported by funding from the U.S. Office of Naval Research. The research goals for Alex include design and integration of next-generation controllers for outdoor urban operations, enhanced design of behaviors for building exploration, integration of a behavior cloning pipeline, and improved simulation environment.

The aim is for Alex and its successors to be robust and yet nimble enough to operate in operational environments where the risk to human responders is high, from military scenarios to disaster response.

In the winners’ announcement, Hallewell congratulated those recognized for advancing the field of humanoid robotics. “We’re proud to be part of this exciting journey and inspired by the ongoing achievements of the humanoid robotics community,” he said.

IHMC is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System where researchers pioneer science and technology aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. IHMC researchers and staff collaborate extensively with the government, industry and academia to help develop breakthrough technologies. IHMC research partners have included: DARPA, the National Science Foundation, NASA, Army, Navy, Air Force, National Institutes of Health, IBM, Microsoft, Honda, Boeing, Lockheed, and many others.

STEM-Talk: Marina Walther-Antonio on the microbiome and gynecologic cancers

Marina Wather-Antonio was raised to ask questions — and encouraged to find the answers for herself.

Born in the years after Portgual’s dictatorship fell in 1975, she says her father prized intellectual rigor and raised her to be an independent thinker.

“My dad was very set on raising me in a way that I wouldn’t just be believing everything everyone told me,” she says. “Inadvertently, I think he ended up raising a scientist because I would ask questions as any little kid does and he would never answer them.”

That led her to a career in science asking questions that could have a fundamental impact on women’s health and well-being.

Walther-Antonio is an assistant professor at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., whose research focuses on the human microbiome and women’s health. On this episode of STEM-Talk, she shares how she and her colleagues are using the methodologies of environmental microbiology and astrobiology — two disciplines she studied early in her career — to improve our understanding of gynecologic cancers.

She and her team have been developing early detection tests that will help clinicians intervene earlier in the treatment of ovarian and endometrial cancers.

The microbiome field emerged from an idea that there are microbes that exist in our body that may not be pathogens. “They may be beneficial,” she says. “I see it as a field that is between environmental microbiology and clinical microbiology in that we look at the human body as an ecosystem and how do we get that ecosystem into healthy balance and build resilience in people.”

Her professional career wound down a couple of paths before she found a home investigating the microbiome’s role in cancer and reproductive health.

The conversation in Episode 188 covers topics such as:

  • Her internship at NASA, which included several projects under way at the Astrobiology Institute that took her to a Mars analogue site in Oregon’s Warner Valley.
  • How her mentor when she joined the Mayo Clinic, Heidi Nelson, encouraged her to pursue her interests beyond the surgical department where she first came to work. “She told me, just because you are in the department of surgery, don’t feel constrained… Mayo is a big place, go find your collaborators, your people, and talk to folks about the problems they have and want to solve and see what you are interested in.”
  • How that advice led her to women’s health and gynecologic cancers and the role the microbiome could have in these diseases.
  • An ongoing study with Mayo and Wellsley College looking to better understand what the vaginal microbiome looks like (including its normal daily fluctuations) to help build a baseline to underpin future research.
  • The challenges and importance of longitudinal research, especially to help understand the environmental components of these studies.
  • What mentorship means to her especially as director of the Mayo Clinic’s membership and Ph.D. program. “There’s great coaching provided to faculty to support their teaching. I saw some of those programs and thought there are folks who never get considered for positions later in their career because they just never had good mentorship in how to be a leader in that way,” she says. She wanted to provide some of that guidance early to people, when they were still working on their Ph.D.’s, to help fill that gap early on in their careers.
  • Why time with family and friends and doing things that you love can be a critical piece of recharging and connecting to the creativity that strengthens your scientific pursuits.
  • How her early enthusiasm for studying extraterrestrial life continues to inform her curiosity.

STEM-Talk is an award-winning podcast from the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition that hosts conversations with the leading minds in science and technology. Listen on your favorite platform or browse our library at https://www.ihmc.us/stemtalks/

STEM-Talk: Dawn Kernagis on permanent human subsea habitats

Published 10.3.25

The Carolina coast had a big influence on Dawn Kernagis.

Kernagis was about 8 years old when her family moved to North Carolina, and as a water-loving child, she was often found swimming. Even so, the turning point for her was a visit to the Fort Fisher Aquarium that sparked what became a lifelong passion for diving.

Seeing a giant aquarium full of different species of fish that lived subsea triggered Dawn’s curiosity.

“This is amazing,” she thought. “I want to become a marine biologist.”

She began poring over her father’s oceanography textbooks from a class he was taking at North Carolina State University. Though some of the concepts flew over her head at the time, it became the portal that led her to what she wanted to do.

“I would read all of the diving magazines. I would write essays about what I thought it would be like to scuba dive when I was in middle school. I was just ready to go underwater.”

Kernagis, our normal STEM-Talk co-host, is on the other side of the microphone for this episode, talking about her new position as the director of scientific research for DEEP, a UK startup that is pioneering the next era of ocean exploration.

Kernagis is a NASA-trained NEEMO Aquanaut, a Fellow of the Explorer’s Club and has been inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame. In addition to co-hosting STEM-Talk for the past nine years, she is also a Visiting Research Scientist at IHMC. Her research has been focused on protecting the brain and nervous system of people working in extreme environments.

The episode includes conversations about:

  • How her love of cave diving led to her “obsession” with ways to protect people who dive in extreme environments.
  • Her acceptance into the Aquanaut Program and her participation in one of NASA’s NEEMO missions.
  • How Dawn became director of scientific research for DEEP, a company aiming to “Make Humans Aquatic,” and much more. Visit your preferred podcast platform to listen today.

IHMC is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System where researchers pioneer science and technology aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. IHMC researchers and staff collaborate extensively with the government, industry and academia to help develop breakthrough technologies. IHMC research partners have included: DARPA, the National Science Foundation, NASA, Army, Navy, Air Force, National Institutes of Health, IBM, Microsoft, Honda, Boeing, Lockheed, and many others.

STEM-Talk: Mari Dezawa on her MUSE cell discovery and regenerative medicine

Published 9.4.25

Science was always part of Mari Dezawa’s life — even if she first thought she might head in another professional direction.

Her father was a researcher and she remembers many weekends in her childhood spent in her father’s lab. But when she was in high school, she dreamed of becoming a lawyer.

A childhood spent moving multiple times between the U.S., Japan and elsewhere for her father’s career, may have been a hindrance.

“When I returned to Japan, my scores in reading and writing Japanese were low, she says. Struggling to keep up with those classes, she changed her policy and decided to go to medical school.

Now we all may be better off for that change of plans.

Dezawa is one of the world’s leaders in stem-cell research and regenerative medicine, known worldwide for her discovery of MUSE cells, which are found in the human body and have the unique ability to replace damaged tissues as well as help the body heal itself. MUSE is short for Multilineage Differentiating Stress Enduring cells.

We are fortunate to have her on this episode of STEM-Talk, available now wherever you listen to podcasts.

Dezawa is a professor and chair of the Department of Stem Cell Biology and Histology at Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine. She has published more than 200 papers and is particularly known for her 2010 paper on the mechanisms of MUSE cells. In 2018, she was appointed a fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Inventors and has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Japanese Government’s Prize for the Commendation for Science and Technology.

Our conversation with Dezawa covers a lot of ground:

  • Methods she developed to induce bone marrow stromal cells to generate neuro and skeletal muscle cells, which play a crucial role in tissue repair and regeneration.
  • How a mistake in the lab — and a collegial cocktail party — put her on the journey toward the incredible discovery of MUSE cells.
  • What makes MUSE cells — which can repair organ tissues and themselves — so significant. “MUSE cells were originally considered very convenient (type) of stem cells. As research has progressed over the last 15 years, the interpretation of MUSE cells has changed slightly…. Like macrophages they capture damaged cells and eat them and quickly differentiate into the same cell type” effectively reconstituting themselves into new versions of the damaged or dying cells they just consumed.
  • How MUSE cells may be used in treatment of myocardial infarction, stroke, traumatic brain injury, and dementia.
  • Her plans for applying her research to human trials in Alzheimer’s disease and much more.

IHMC is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System where researchers pioneer science and technology aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. IHMC researchers and staff collaborate extensively with the government, industry and academia to help develop breakthrough technologies. IHMC research partners have included: DARPA, the National Science Foundation, NASA, Army, Navy, Air Force, National Institutes of Health, IBM, Microsoft, Honda, Boeing, Lockheed, and many others.

 

2025 Evening Lectures launch with “The Barbell Prescription” co-author Dr. Jonathon Sullivan

Published 8.20.25

Strength-building and aging, psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, and future of robotics and exoskeletons are all up for discussion in the Fall 2025 Evening Lecture series at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC).

Dr. Jonathon Sullivan launches the Fall season on Sept. 18 with a talk titled “Athletic Training, Transhumanism, and Telos.” The talk begins at 6 p.m., the reception precedes it at 5:30 p.m. in the community room at 40 S. Alcaniz St. in downtown Pensacola.  Reserve your free tickets today.

Sullivan is a retired physician and neuroscientist known for his work in strength training in older people. He is the co-author of “The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training For Life After Forty” and is the owner and director of the Greysteel Clinic in Farmington, Mich., where he has trained older adults since 2014. He works with Barbell Logic, a professional strength and nutrition coaching company, and he is the host and producer of the Greysteel channel on YouTube.

Sullivan describes strength training as a “critical form of exercise medicine for healthy aging.” His talk will explore a general consideration of training programs, and how athletes and coaches develop fitness attributes by exploiting a biological stress-recovery-adaptation process. This cycle has structural similarities with other physical, developmental, and evolutionary processes. These observations, Sullivan says compel an expansion of the concept of the athlete beyond biology alone. He says the athletic paradigms of training and practice will become more important, not less, in a transhuman future.

Other lectures include:

Oct. 7: Dr. Thom Mayer is medical director for the NFL Players Association and is a leader in emergency medicine, sports medicine, and leadership in times of crisis. His expertise has been instrumental in advancing the understanding of concussion management and emergency care in sports. He has served the U.S. Department of Defense Science Board Task Forces on Bioterrorism, Homeland Security, and consequences of Weapons of Mass Destruction. He also is a successful entrepreneur and author.

Nov. 13: Dr. Charles Serhan is a Harvard professor best known for his discovery of specialized pro-resolving mediators. SPMs are molecules that can activate the natural resolution of inflammation and help people avoid anti-inflammatory drugs. The discovery of SPMs changed our understanding of inflammation and human disease. He is the Simon Gelman Professor of Anesthesia at Harvard Medical School and the director of the Center for Experimental Therapeutics and Reperfusion Injury at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Dec. 4: Dr. Zach Graham is an IHMC Research Scientist and a Health Science Research Specialist at the Birmingham VA Health Care System. His research interests are focused on how exercise can be implemented to improve the health and quality of life of individuals across disease states and lifespan. Spinal cord injury, Parkinson’s disease and aging are a few of his research areas of interest.

Since 2001, IHMC has welcomed the public to learn from renowned speakers in science, technology, civic development, economic development and more. These free, monthly Evening Lectures draw audiences of 200 people or more and are accessible in our online library.

IHMC is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System where researchers pioneer science and technology aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. IHMC researchers and staff collaborate extensively with the government, industry and academia to help develop breakthrough technologies. IHMC research partners have included: DARPA, the National Science Foundation, NASA, Army, Navy, Air Force, National Institutes of Health, IBM, Microsoft, Honda, Boeing, Lockheed, and many others.

 

Science Saturdays are learning experiences for volunteers, students alike

Published 8.18.25

There is a lot to love about Science Saturdays at IHMC.

These science-enrichment sessions bring science to students in grades 3-7 in fun and engaging ways on topics ranging from paper airplanes to robot hands and roller coasters. The series returns for the 2025-2026 school year in Pensacola on Sept. 20, 2025. Learn more here.

It is free — which is something parents can love. It is full of activities in which scientific principles jump out of the textbook and into the real world — which is something students and instructors can love.

But what makes Science Saturdays truly special are people like Hannah and Rachel Kirby.

Rachel Kirby, a 2025 Pace High School graduate, was a longtime Science Saturdays volunteer.

The Kirbys — twins who graduated in 2025 from Pace High School — were two stalwart high school volunteers who have given more than a few Saturdays to work with small groups of students. Both are freshmen at Florida State University this fall studying biomedical engineering — inspired in large part by what they saw at IHMC.

“It has been a true pleasure to have Hannah and Rachel volunteer with us,” says Ursula Schwuttke, IHMC’s director of community outreach. “It was easy for the younger students to relate to them as someone to emulate because they are such inspiring STEM role models. We will definitely miss them as they head off to college, but I expect they are bound for great things.”

The volunteers for this program are selected not only for their science abilities, trustworthiness and reliability, but also for their abilities to work with others, to explain science concepts to children, and to make learning fun.

Each Saturday that the program is offered, an IHMC research scientist leads a topic in an area of science or engineering. The volunteers’ task is to help the children assigned to them with the hands-on activities that are the emphasis of the program, to make sure each child has an opportunity to participate and has a good time.

Hannah and Rachel both came to Science Saturdays as younger students. Hannah says that experience sparked her further interest in STEM and helped her build other skills that she knows will serve her well.

“Volunteering at IHMC has helped me develop strong communication skills and the patience needed to lead and teach a group effectively,” Hannah says. “It also taught me how to navigate challenges that may arise in group settings.

These skills are valuable in any team environment and will better prepare me for future internships or jobs.”
Rachel agrees and notes that her time volunteering at IHMC helped her build confidence in her ability to multitask, communicate directions and collaborate with others.

“I also genuinely enjoyed volunteering because I got to work with younger kids and see their excitement and love for learning science,” Rachel says. “It really reminded me of how I used to be while learning new things.”

Getting sneak peeks into the work IHMC does was also a nice perk, says Rachel, who “hopes one day to contribute to projects like those I saw at IHMC.”

Both Kirbys say they earned rewards apart from the purely scientific inspiration.

“The most rewarding part is seeing younger students get excited about learning,” Hannah says. “It brings me so much joy to see their curiosity and intelligence. They have so much potential, and it gives me hope for the future.”

Sponsors for the 2025-2026 series in Pensacola include premier sponsor Florida Power & Light, the Florida Blue Foundation, and the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office (with Law Enforcement Trust Fund monies).

SCIENCE SATURDAY FALL SCHEDULE
The schedule for Science Saturdays for the Fall is complete. Learn more and stay up to date on topics for these sessions here.
Pensacola Sessions
Sept. 20: Optical Illusions, Katherine Mortimore.
Oct. 18: Electric Motors, Robert Griffin.
Nov. 22: Balloon Cars, Jared Li.
Dec. 13: Computer Game Design, Heath Parr.

IHMC is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System where researchers pioneer science and technology aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. IHMC researchers and staff collaborate extensively with the government, industry, and academia to conduct ground-breaking science and develop breakthrough technologies. IHMC research partners have included: DARPA, the National Science Foundation, NASA, Army, Navy, Air Force, National Institutes of Health, IBM, Microsoft, Honda, Boeing, Lockheed, and many others.

STEM-Talk: Andrew Koutnik on nutrition, metabolism and human performance

Published 7.31.25

Andrew Koutnik never imagined himself as a scientist.

“As a kid, I had limited awareness of what a scientist actually was,” Koutnik says. Science segments on National Public Radio, which he listened to with his father, helped open his mind to the role science could have.

Those little doses of science, along with the influence of a much-loved neighbor who routinely shared knowledge and resources with the young Koutnik, opened the door to his scientific journey.

Today Koutnik is exploring those boundaries using his personal experience as a type 1 diabetic to fuel a passion for understanding and bettering human performance.

Koutnik, an IHMC Visiting Research Scientist, is the guest on Episode 185 of STEM-Talk, available now wherever you listen to podcasts.

Koutnik has worked with Harvard, Johns Hopkins, NASA, and the Department of Defense to develop evidence-based strategies for overcoming complex health challenges. He is a graduate of Florida State University and earned his Ph.D. in medical sciences at The University of South Florida.

“It was in college that I realized you could explore your personal curiosities and actually get paid to do it,” Koutnik says. “My journey into science really came through personal curiosity and my life experience with obesity and diabetes.”

Our conversation touches on:

  • Why he considers type 1 diabetes as one of his ultimate assets. “Managing my type 1 diabetes gave me minute-by-minute insights on food, exercise, sleep, stress, illness, and other lifestyle factors and how they interact to influence glucose control and insulin leads…. Living with type 1 diabetes, unlike any course I ever took, made me appreciate the beautiful complexity of human metabolism.”
  • The anatomy and physiology professor at Florida State University who influenced his journey.
  • His time at the University of South Florida with Dom D’Agostino, a friend of STEM-Talk who has appeared multiple times on the podcast beginning in 2016.
  • How the discovery of insulin changed the treatment of diabetes and how it continues to influence the evolution of disease treatment.
  • How his appreciation of his disease as an autoimmune disorder expanded as he learned about the environmental and lifestyle influences his disease state.
  • His work on sports nutrition, human performance research and much more.

IHMC is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System where researchers pioneer science and technology aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. IHMC researchers and staff collaborate extensively with the government, industry and academia to help develop breakthrough technologies. IHMC research partners have included: DARPA, the National Science Foundation, NASA, Army, Navy, Air Force, National Institutes of Health, IBM, Microsoft, Honda, Boeing, Lockheed, and many others.

 

 

Scientists passing the torch at IHMC Summer Robotics Camp

Published 7.16.25

Nicole Stafford volunteered as part of IHMC’s Summer Robotics Camp to give students something she missed as a kid.

“I did not go to a camp like this growing up and I feel like it is an excellent chance for kids to see if they like robotics and interact with scientists,” says Stafford, a mechanical engineer on the exoskeleton team at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. “(IHMC) does a great job to give kids that opportunity and it was special to be a part of.”

Research Scientist Nicole Stafford at Robotics Camp 2025.

Stafford, who earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree at Standford University and her Ph.D. at the University of Florida, was one of a handful of IHMC scientists who acted as guest lecturers at the camp, answering questions and sharing what a life in science might look like.

“Interacting with the campers through a lecture and lunch was a fantastic and fun opportunity. The campers asked some great questions related to exoskeletons and being an engineer, so it was fun to see their curiosity.”

Robotics Camp ran in three sessions in Pensacola and two sessions in Ocala this year. Participants spent four days learning to program LEGO Mindstorm robots, meeting STEM professionals and learning about robotics research at IHMC.

Camp is sponsored by the NextEra Foundation, Florida Blue and Cox. Their support helps make these camps possible and funds scholarships to cover camp fees for students from families of limited means.

Research Scientist Jared Li also was among those who took part. Li leads the Institute’s exoskeleton team.

“I find it very fulfilling to present our work to younger generations and give them a glimpse behind the scenes of tech that may seem like science fiction,” Li says. “I want them to get excited, knowing that it’s well within their reach!”

Research Scientist Toshi Miyatsu is part of the healthspan, resilience, and performance research team at IHMC. His research focuses on neuroscience and cognitive and technological tools that enhance learning, instruction, and assessment. He says lecturing to and having lunch with campers is “always the highlight of my week.”

Research Scientist Toshi Miyatsu at 2025 Summer Robotics Camp

Not only is it a chance to share science he is passionate about with curious young minds but also it is a chance to recharge his own enthusiasm.

“I always emerge from the lecture energized, reminded of how fortunate I am to study these subjects for a living,” Miyatsu says. “Over lunch, I love sharing laughs and diving into conversations that range from scientific puzzles to real-world and personal implications. These thoughtful questions often lead us to explore broader dimensions of science and society together.

“Robotics Camp is a great IHMC tradition that both inspires students and recharges scientists, and I’m proud to be part of it each year,” he said.

IHMC is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System where researchers pioneer science and technology aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. IHMC researchers and staff collaborate extensively with the government, industry and academia to help develop breakthrough technologies. IHMC research partners have included: DARPA, the National Science Foundation, NASA, Army, Navy, Air Force, National Institutes of Health, IBM, Microsoft, Honda, Boeing, Lockheed, and many others.

Published 7.16.25

STEM-Talk: Ask Me Anything with Dr. Ken Ford

Published 7.11.25

It’s time for another episode of Ask Me Anything on STEM-Talk, available now on your favorite podcast platform.

Dawn and Ken answer listener questions that range from generative AI to whether grip strength is a biomarker for longevity and the potential of ketamine as a treatment for depression. If you have a question you’d like to submit for a future Ask Me Anything, email STEM-Talk producer Randy Hammer  at  rhammer@ihmc.org.

This episode includes:

  •  Whether Ken and Dawn prefer to read books in print or digitally.
    Ken’s thoughts on a recent paper claiming that a decline in grip strength is associated with adverse health consequences.
  • The FDA-approved use of esketamine, a derivative of ketamine, as a therapy for depression.
  • Ken’s thoughts on how tools such as OpenAI’s “Whisper” transcription tool ought to be integrated into the marketplace — and how their risk of error ought to be navigated.
  • Whether there is ever such a thing as “settled science.”
  • An overview of Dawn’s work with the deep-sea technology company DEEP.
  • Ken’s recent commencement address to 2025 graduates at the University of West Florida. It includes why he believes we are all inventors — and that our greatest inventive work is rejoicing in the extreme unlikelihood and fragility of our own existence.

IHMC is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System where researchers pioneer science and technology aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. IHMC researchers and staff collaborate extensively with the government, industry and academia to help develop breakthrough technologies. IHMC research partners have included: DARPA, the National Science Foundation, NASA, Army, Navy, Air Force, National Institutes of Health, IBM, Microsoft, Honda, Boeing, Lockheed, and many others.

Published 7.11.25

David Bear joins IHMC Board of Directors

Published 7.1.25

David Bear has joined the Board of Directors of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, adding to his impressive business and civic resume.

David Bear

David Bear

“David has a wealth of experience in both business leadership and civic involvement, along with deep community ties and philanthropic vision,” says Dr. Morley Stone, IHMC’s Chief Executive Officer. “He will be a tremendous asset to IHMC and we are fortunate to have him join our Board of Directors.”

Bear is the owner and CEO of The Lewis Bear Company, a beverage distributorship founded in 1876 in Pensacola. Bear and his company founded Bear Family Foundation in 2002, which has awarded millions of dollars in grants to more than 118 local nonprofit organizations serving Northwest Florida.

“IHMC is one of the lesser-known jewels in the intellectual and economic landscape of Northwest Florida,” said Bear. “Over the years, I’ve watched the Institute expand and innovate, and I’ve become a great admirer of the research challenges it embraces. The opportunity to help share IHMC’s story with a broader audience is something I couldn’t pass up.”

In addition to his entrepreneurial success, Bear has built upon his family’s legacy of commitment to public service and community engagement.

From August 2021 until June of 2025, he served on the Board of Triumph Gulf Coast, the nonprofit corporation funded by a legal settlement the British oil and gas company BP following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Its purpose is to seed projects that will transform the regional economy.

Bear’s leadership extends beyond business into cultural and community development. He is the founder and Trustee Emeritus of Art, Culture, and Entertainment, Inc., and has held significant roles such as the current Chair of the Escambia County Tourist Development Council, Chair of the Florida Beer Wholesaler Association, and Chair of FloridaWest.

Additionally, he played a key role in founding the Foo Foo Festival, a fall event that celebrates the arts and culture as a driver of tourism in the community.

Bear is past president of the Boards for the Arts Council of Northwest Florida, Pensacola Museum of Art, Creative Learning Academy, and Pensacola MESS Hall. He earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration from Belhaven College.

IHMC is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System where researchers pioneer science and technology aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. IHMC researchers and staff collaborate extensively with the government, industry and academia to help develop breakthrough technologies. IHMC research partners have included: DARPA, the National Science Foundation, NASA, Army, Navy, Air Force, National Institutes of Health, IBM, Microsoft, Honda, Boeing, Lockheed, and many others.

Published 7.1.25

 

STEM-Talk: Michael Schmidt on building a space-faring civilization

Published 6.24.25

It may not be what he envisioned as a college student, but Michael Schmidt says the blessing of “deep curiosity” has been the key to his career in science.

“I didn’t have a master plan in place other than to know I was deeply curious,” he says. “I loved that intersection between performance, medicine and biology.”

Aptitude testing he underwent showed that the process of discovery was most alluring for Schmidt and that became the driving force of his career.

“We know that careers are short and needs are high,” Schmidt says. “There is a doctor sitting in front of somebody every day by the millions, and that person needs an answer. (The question is) how do we accelerate that path to the answer.”

This STEM-Talk features part two of our conversation with Schmidt, the founder, CEO, and Chief Scientific Officer of Sovaris Aerospace, a company focused on assessments and solutions applied to humans in space and extreme environments on Earth.

In this episode, we talk about NASA’s plans to send humans to Mars and build permanent colonies on the Moon and Mars. Listen today wherever you enjoy podcasts.

In part one, Episode 182, we talked about Schmidt’s pioneering work in precision medicine and how he has used it to improve the cognitive and physical performance of astronauts as well as NBA, NFL players and Special Operations forces.

Tune in to this episode for insights including:

  • The rich source of data from the NASA twins expedition tracking astronaut Scott Kelly over 340 days in space — and his twin, Mark Kelly, on Earth.
  • The physiological and cognitive protections that the cardio and muscular fitness of astronauts before they go to space confers on cardiovascular, immune, bone density, muscle health, and nervous systems. “I think overall going into space with the greatest level of reserves, whether its brain, cardiovascular, muscle, bone, are really critical elements of preparation for space travel,” he says.
  • The vulnerability of specialized brain tissues like the hippocampus to radiation, particularly in the context of a long duration spaceflight to Mars.
  • The insights to be gained from tracking the cognitive impacts of therapeutic radiation delivered on Earth for what astronauts might experience.
  • Schmidt’s his recent book, “Building a Space-Faring Civilization,” which addresses the challenges of civilian spaceflight and the construction of space settlements.
  • An underappreciated, but critical, component of long duration spaceflight — the psychology of team dynamics.
  • Why being the best possible team member might be the most valuable superpower young researchers can have.

IHMC is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System where researchers pioneer science and technology aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. IHMC researchers and staff collaborate extensively with the government, industry and academia to help develop breakthrough technologies. IHMC research partners have included: DARPA, the National Science Foundation, NASA, Army, Navy, Air Force, National Institutes of Health, IBM, Microsoft, Honda, Boeing, Lockheed, and many others.

 

Florida Blue award supports health and wellness research and outreach at IHMC

Published 5.21.25

Florida Blue, the state’s Blue Cross and Blue shield plan, has announced an award to the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) to further health and wellness research and community outreach.

The investment reflects a continuing collaboration between the two entities and will help support education and outreach efforts that further IHMC’s mission to advance the human condition. The community room in IHMC’s new Healthspan, Resilience, and Performance Research Complex will be named in recognition of Florida Blue’s support.

“Florida Blue is committed to improving the health of our communities,” says Hong Potomski, market leader for Florida Blue in Northwest Florida. “IHMC’s innovative research and approach to advancing the human condition aligns with our mission, and we are excited to support their efforts.”

Florida Blue leadership site visit

Leadership from Florida Blue during a visit with the IHMC leadership team. Photo Credit: IHMC © all rights reserved

Dr. Morley Stone, IHMC’s Chief Executive Officer, notes that the Institute’s purpose is research that improves healthspan and resilience for all. That aligns to Florida Blue’s commitment to building healthy communities across the state.

“Understanding the human body and how we can prevent the progression of disease is how we improve quality of life for all. This collaboration reflects Florida Blue’s commitment to the community and the important work that we can do together,” Stone says. “We are grateful to work with Florida Blue on something that will benefit the community at large over the long term.”

This contribution reflects the way the community has answered the call to support IHMC and its decades-long effort to use innovative work in three research pillars — artificial intelligence and human-machine teaming, robotics and exoskeletons, and healthspan, resilience, and performance — to push the boundaries of science and technology forward.

“Advancing the human condition is at the root of our mission,” says Carol Carlan, IHMC’s Director of Philanthropy. “We can’t do what we do without the community and the support of partners like Florida Blue who embrace that mission, see its value, and want to help further it.” 

Florida Blue, the leading health insurer in Florida, has been providing health solutions to residents of Florida for more than 80 years. Driven by its mission of helping people and communities achieve better health, the company serves more than six million members and all 67 Florida counties. With regional offices across Florida and headquartered in Jacksonville, FL, it is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.

IHMC is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System where researchers pioneer science and technology aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. IHMC researchers and staff collaborate extensively with the government, industry and academia to help develop breakthrough technologies. IHMC research partners have included: DARPA, the National Science Foundation, NASA, Army, Navy, Air Force, National Institutes of Health, IBM, Microsoft, Honda, Boeing, Lockheed, and many others.

STEM-Talk: Ken Forbus on AI and his development of the Structure Mapping Engine

Published 5.13.25

Episode 181 of STEM-Talk offers a meeting of some truly great minds in the field of artificial intelligence. It is available now on our website and wherever you listen to podcasts.

The conversation features three fellows of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence:

  • Northwestern University’s Dr. Ken Forbus.
  • IHMC founder Dr. Ken Ford.
  • And retired associate director of IHMC Dr. James Allen.

Forbus is the Walter P. Murphy Professor of Computer Science and a Professor of Education at Northwestern University. He was the inaugural winner of the Herbet A. Simon Prize for Advances in Cognitive Systems.

Co-hosts Ford and Allen interview Forbus about his development of the Structure Mapping Engine. In artificial intelligence and cognitive science, the Structure Mapping Engine is a computer simulation of analogy and similarity comparisons that helped pave the way for computers to think like humans.

The conversation leads from Forbus’ early life in a family the raised and bred horses to his innovative work in a field he helped pioneer. The three AAAI fellows also have a fascinating discussion about the ethical guardrails that are needed as AI becomes more human-like.

One hint: It will require a lot more than simply meeting the Turing Test and declaring victory.

“The problem with the Turing Test is when it comes to interaction, we’re all like Fox Mulder (on the ‘X-Files’): We want to believe. We will believe anything. Simple string-based chatbots have been fooling people since the 1960s,” Forbus says.

As Ford notes, the media focus on chatbots has obscured other methods of AI that are used all of the time. It is as if, Ford notes, the broad public believes chatbots are all there is to AI, when, as this episode shows, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

“There are so many other things going on that are not in the popular press,” Forbus says.

In this episode, listeners will learn about:

  • The three revolutions that are going on in AI right now.
  • How, Forbus as a self-described nerdy kid, grew up in a family that bred and raised horses. “The thing about calf-roping is, it’s a lot easier if the horse knows what it’s doing. Their job is to keep the rope taut so you can swing down and rope and quickly tie the calf. When you think about it, compare a horse to a self-driving car. A horse really works hard to not get itself and you killed. And if we have self-driving cars that worked more like horses, we’d be better off.”
  • How AI intrigued him from an early age, and especially how he learned from the library at the University of Arizona’s collection of works written about AI — “two whole shelves” — in the early 1970s.
  • The splash his 1984 paper on Qualitative Process Theory made on the world of AI. “We are surrounded by continuous phenomena. Things move, flow, heat up, cool down. Qualitative Process Theory, he says, creates a language for a kind of mental model to make predictions about the world, no numbers or equations needed.
  • His collaboration with his wife Dr. Dedre Gentner on the Structure Mapping Engine project. This theory explains how people understand and reason about relationships between different situations, which is central to human cognition. It was foundational for the Structure Mapping Engine.
  • How Structure Mapping Engine has changed and improved over time.
  • His goal to create systems that can interact with people as apprentices or collaborators rather than just tools.
  • Forbus’ book “Qualitative Representations: How People Reason and Learn About the Continuous World” which proposes that qualitative representations, which are symbolic representations that carve continuous phenomena into meaningful units, hold the key to one of the deepest mysteries of cognitive science and are central to human cognition.

IHMC is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System where researchers pioneer science and technology aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. IHMC researchers and staff collaborate extensively with the government, industry and academia to help develop breakthrough technologies. IHMC research partners have included: DARPA, the National Science Foundation, NASA, Army, Navy, Air Force, National Institutes of Health, IBM, Microsoft, Honda, Boeing, Lockheed, and many others.

STEM-Talk: Pascal Lee on returning to the Moon — and heading to Mars

Published 4.9.25

Dr. Pascal Lee had led more than 30 expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic to gain knowledge for a greater adventure — Mars.

Lee, a planetary scientist with the SETI Institute, the Mars Institute, and NASA Ames Research Center, brings his vision for reaching this next, lofty goal to his third appearance on STEM-Talk, available now wherever you listen to podcasts.

“The return to the moon is one of those things we would have expected to happen much sooner. And even the journey to Mars, I had always hoped that we’d be much farther along by now,” Lee says. “But this is feeling like it’s going to happen soon.”

Lee’s past appearances were Episode 121 in 2021 and Episode 17 in 2016. He also gave an Evening Lecture on our Pensacola campus in January 2025.

His research focuses on the history of ice and water on the Moon and Mars and the possibilities of exploring both of these worlds. Earlier this year, he and his student, Sourabh Shubham, announced the discovery of a previously unrecognized giant volcano on Mars, the Noctis Volcano.

“It’s not the largest volcano on Mars, it’s not the tallest volcano on Mars, but in contrast to all other volcanos that we know of, which are relatively well preserved, this one is so deeply eroded that not only do you see the outer lava layers and eruption layers, you also see the ancient ones that would have been buried inside the volcano,” Lee says.

While Mars exploration is more prevalent in recent popular imagination, Lee maintains that returning to the Moon and establishing a permanent base there is critical to the future of human space exploration.

“I see the moon as a scientific jewel,” he says. “There are so many things we can explore,” including caves on both the Moon and Mars, which could act as possible refuges for humans there. “You are protected from the ionizing radiation of space, you are subject to dampened temperature variations, protected from micrometeorites … Caves are the difference in something that is much more survivable for life from Earth versus the surface,” Lee says.

Lee has suggested setting up a lunar base at the floor of the Clavius crater. Clavius is where the moon base in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” was located, as well, Lee notes. “The fact that we could establish a base at Clavius and be on our way to fulfill the vision of ‘2001’ would be something very attractive to the public.” Beyond the cinematic and poetic importance, Lee says “Clavius has become the place to beat” as a lunar base homeport site.

The conversation also covers:

  • What is appealing about exploring the Rutherford Crater caves near the Clavius crater. The caves “hold the promise of being cold enough to possibly have water-ice trapped in them. Being at Clavius gives us a nice opportunity without having to drive too far to explore a large number of caves on the moon which will pave the way for doing the same on Mars.”
  • How contemporary interest in human space exploration appears tied to current geopolitical issues between the U.S. and China, much like the first space race between the US and USSR.
  • The role nuclear power will play in the future of a lunar base.
  • The prospects of colonizing Mars. “The life support system that a crew needs is essentially an intensive care unit. Why would you want to raise kids on Mars in an intensive care unit, in a place where they will never have a breath of fresh air, where they will not know the outdoors as we know the outdoors. I think some people who see Mars as this promised land are for some of them trying to escape the reality of the Earth, and that is not a good reason to go to Mars.”
  • What makes the Martian moons Phobos and Demos so intriguing.

IHMC is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System where researchers pioneer science and technology aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. IHMC researchers and staff collaborate extensively with the government, industry and academia to help develop breakthrough technologies. IHMC research partners have included: DARPA, the National Science Foundation, NASA, Army, Navy, Air Force, National Institutes of Health, IBM, Microsoft, Honda, Boeing, Lockheed, and many others.

Aging Symposium draws experts to IHMC

Published 4.4.25

Skeletal muscle is vital to human health and disease management, particularly as we age.

However, the muscle mass and functional declines that come with aging are influenced by a complex web of biological and behavioral factors.

On April 10 2025, the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) will host experts across a host of disciplines for the “Skeletal Muscle in Aging, Healthspan, and Disease” symposium, organized by Dr. Marcas Bamman, Senior Research Scientist at IHMC and director of the Healthspan, Resilience and Performance research team.

“The symposium is an opportunity to discuss the state of knowledge on mechanisms and countermeasures, identify knowledge gaps, and we hope, chart a path toward high-impact research priorities,” Bamman said.

Online registration is still available here. Topics for discussion will include:

Hospital-Associated Disability, Dr. Cynthia Brown, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center.

End of Life and Muscle Health: Proxies and Prognosis, Dr. Dan Sontheimer, Baptist Healthcare.

Research Priorities in Aging Skeletal Muscle & Healthspan, Dr. Amanda Boyce, Dr. Monica Serra, Dr. Lyndon Joseph, National Institutes of Health National Institute on Aging.

Age-Regulated Mechanisms Affecting Muscle Mass and Function, Dr. David Glass, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.

Protein for Healthy Muscle Aging, Dr. Benjamin Miller, Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation & Oklahoma City Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

Epigenetic Mechanisms of Skeletal Muscle Aging, Dr. Payel Sen, NIH National Institute on Aging.

Tryptophan Metabolism: A Key Modulator of Functional Decline, Frailty and Aging, Dr. Reyhan Westbrook, Johns Hopkins University.

Cellular Senescence and Skeletal Muscle Aging, Dr. Nathan LeBrasseur, Mayo Clinic – Rochester.

The Aging Circadian Clock in Muscle: New Target for Therapeutics?, Dr. Karyn Esser, University of Florida.

MuRF1, E3 Ubiquitin Ligases & Regulation of Muscle Mass, Dr. Sue Bodine, Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation and Oklahoma City Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

Mitochondrial Involvement in Aging Skeletal Muscle, Dr. Russell Hepple, University of Florida.

Global Strategies to Improve Muscle, Cognitive, & Immune Function in Aging, Dr. Jamie Justice, XPRIZE Healthspan.

Resistance Training in Older Adults, Dr. Roger Fielding, Tufts University.

Elite Human Performance Across the Lifespan, Dr. Scott Trappe, Ball State University.