The Ohio State University is working to advance and diversify its research partnerships with the United States Air Force. This autumn, a program sponsored by the Enterprise for Research, Innovation and Knowledge brought together university social scientists and representatives from the Air Force Research Laboratory and Air Force Office of Scientific Research for a day of discussion and networking.

The AFRL and AFOSR have a long history of funding academic research with the potential to impact the Air and Space Forces, and they have partnered with hundreds of institutions around the world, including Ohio State. However, to date, most of this Ohio State support has occurred in the physical and material sciences, said Kate Hayes-Ozello, Sr. Research Development Specialist with ERIK and the organizer of the Oct. 8 event. Just last year, Emeritus Professor Pierre Agostini won the Nobel Prize in Physics for research that the Air Force helped fund.

Now, the university hopes to expand its Air Force research partnerships in the social sciences, which are a growing priority area.

“Given Ohio State’s growing strength and investments in social sciences that are Department of Defense-adjacent, we are trying to be proactive,” she said. “Our hope is to build on this event to cement connections between our social sciences faculty and the social science interests of the Air Force.”

About 20 Ohio State researchers attended, including faculty and students from the Departments of Psychology, Sociology and Political Science and School of Communication. Public presentations by AFRL and AFOSR scientists detailed the process of applying for and using Air Force grants, as well as the kinds of work that these funds support. The scope is wide and interdisciplinary. 

“We work across the board with so many different kinds of partnerships, because it really is an ecosystem when it comes to research and really pushing research forward,” said Leslie Blaha, Deputy Chief Scientist of the AFOSR.

The Air Force primarily supports what’s known as “basic research,” or systematic studies conducted without specific applications for the results in mind. For example, as part of the Minerva Research Initiative that the AFOSR helps administer, an Oregon State University project titled “Future Fish Wars” examines some of the geopolitical, economic and legal impacts of climate change: namely, shifting access to natural resources like fish. Despite its connection to the ocean (which is not a focus of Air Force research), this project has “one of my favorite titles right now,” AFOSR scientist Laura Steckman joked during her presentation.

Brian Simpson, part of the Air Force’s Human Performance Wing, also spoke about research his department oversees into human learning and cognition during combat, such as work by Christine Vitiello, a research psychologist with the AFRL. Vitiello and a collaborator studied disinformation campaigns around Taiwan’s 2024 elections and the effectiveness of China’s efforts to sow distrust among voters.

“Actually, Taiwan, its citizens did a very good job at squashing that disinformation, and they stayed relatively strong,” she said. “So we’re trying to look at that and see: What were the lessons learned, and what makes Taiwan different from maybe some other communities across the world?”

To apply for a grant, university researchers must review requests for proposals, scope their projects based on Air Force priorities and determine which of several thematic research portfolios their work falls within, Blaha said. For most Ohio State faculty and students at the event, this was the Information and Networks portfolio, which supports research on cybersecurity, machine intelligence, cognitive neuroscience and other similar topics through specialized programs. One of these, Trust and Influence, felt particularly relevant for researchers in the Department of Psychology, which is widely recognized for its scholarship on attitudes and persuasion.

“The key is [the Air Force sees] basic research as crucial to informing and improving the applied aspects of their mission,” said Duane Wegener, a professor of social psychology and chair of the department.

Before submitting full proposals, researchers also need to discuss and refine their ideas with ARFL program officers, Blaha said. These channels of communication remain open, she stressed, particularly after a grant is awarded.

“Be part of our ecosystem. We want to partner,” she said. “It’s not quite in our nature to just give you a grant and hope for the best in a few years. We want to hear from you regularly.”

Some Ohio State faculty were able to get a head start on these discussions during the October program.

After the public presentations, Kentaro Fujita, a psychology professor and co-director of the Decision Sciences Collaborative, was one of several researchers to meet with AFRL and AFOSR representatives and invited them to attend a November symposium on computational social science. Featuring influential scholar Matthew Salganik of Princeton University as the keynote speaker, the event would cover some of the novel methodologies the Air Force seeks to promote, Fujita explained, such as machine-learning, text-analysis and large-language models. 

Wegener, incoming psychology professor Kurt Gray and Kelly Garrett, who directs the School of Communication, also had the chance to tell AFRL and AFOSR scientists about Ohio State’s new Collaborative on the Science of Polarization and Misinformation (C-SPAM). Launched in 2024, the initiative studies the science behind current societal divisions and the false and misleading information that often fuels them – topics that resonated with the Air Force scientists. One emphasized his concern about auditory deep fakes and the potential risks they create during combat.

“It’s almost like bringing zero trust in human [communication],” he said.

Wegener said he was excited about the social science partnerships these kinds of shared interests could lead to, particularly involving national security.

Garrett was, too. “There is latent potential here,” he said.