Research

Research identified across the physical sciences.

The pipeline reads widely — across fields, and across specialties within a single field — for gaps where the two sides do not read each other. Often a result already established on one side answers an open question on the other, the missing piece unrecognized as the answer. Across the physical sciences it has surfaced a broad range of such openings.

Each is carried the same way: from the gap to a probable solution, to an experimental method, to a result. The framing separates the constraint that is really a design choice from the one that is a law or measurement limit, and the confirm, refute, and inconclusive rules are fixed before any data is examined. Further detail is available on request.

Applied Directions · the lab's own focus

Five applied problems in resilient timing, navigation, sensing, and trust — closer to the lab's active engineering. Each is stated plainly, with the constraint that keeps it open.

Assured time integrity

Whether a distributed set of clocks can hold verifiable time through combined denial and deception — detecting a manipulated synchronization signal, not only surviving a missing one. Most current work addresses holdover, keeping time when a reference is jammed or denied; that handles denial but not deception, since a clock that holds perfectly can still accept a manipulated re-synchronization signal.

Constraint — with round-trip timing alone, an asymmetric path delay and a clock offset are indistinguishable. Detecting a subtle manipulation requires an independent reference that does not travel through the same channel.

Navigation integrity

Whether a magnetic-anomaly navigation system can detect, in real time, when its reference field is being corrupted by space weather or daily variation.

Constraint — the stable field and the transient corruption reach the same sensor, and cannot be separated at a single node without an independent temporal reference.

Edge trust

Whether a disconnected device can continuously authenticate both itself and its operator with no network callback, and degrade predictably rather than catastrophically if it is physically captured.

Constraint — how much compromising one factor reveals about the other, once the two are combined, is unresolved in the underlying theory. The direction is held pending progress on that question.

Passive distributed sensing

Whether a low-cost mesh of passive sensors can detect and locate an object from its magnetic signature and distinguish it from natural geophysical noise at useful range.

Constraint — a magnetic signature falls off steeply with distance, a hard limit no processing removes, which sets a floor on how dense the mesh must be for a given range.

Data provenance

Whether a recorded observation's time and place of origin can remain verifiable after the fact, even if the device that made it is later fully compromised.

Constraint — a device holding all of its own keys can forge its own clock. A timestamp that survives later compromise requires an external reference the device could not have predicted or manufactured in advance.

Active Work

Assured time integrity

The lab's current active focus, and the applied direction (01, above) it is actively pursuing: a way for synchronized clocks to detect a manipulated timing reference, not only a missing one, drawing on a reference independent of the timing channel.

Status — in progress.

Biometric hashing

A study of biometric-to-key methods, aimed at retaining more usable entropy than a biometric typically reduces to, and at improving how well fuzzy authentication tolerates noise.

Status — paused while the timing work is the focus.

The method merges literature-based discovery, morphological analysis, and strong inference — established practices, credited as such — and adds one requirement of its own: that every candidate be anchored to a fundamental limit before it is pursued. Further detail and literature anchors are available on request. Where the work touches active or contested research, the stated constraint reflects current understanding and may be revised as the field moves.