More Details on the UAP Science Advisory Council
Below is a set of questions that I was asked today about my new leadership position regarding the UAP Science Advisory Council.
1. Please describe this new council’s ultimate aims and overarching responsibility.
In support of President Trump’s directive on UAP transparency, I was tasked by the White House, the Pentagon’s All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the FBI, and the Intelligence Community, to assemble a “UAP Science Advisory Council”. As of now, the council includes the following members along with their helpful expertise:
Prof. Liberty Vittert Capito: data analysis and statistics; Prof. Carol Cleland: anomaly identification; Dr. Richard Cloete: data analysis and AI tools; Dr. Omer Eldadi: data management, AI, and human psychology; Dr. Tim Gallaudet: oceanography; Prof. Robin Hanson: statistics and economics; Ross Howard: communication; Dr. Kevin Knuth: physics and instrumentation; Ben Lamm: oceanography and biology; Dr. Devesh Nandal: numerical analysis and astrophysics; Prof. Garry Nolan: molecular biology and materials science; Dr. Michael Shermer: the study of anomalies; Dr. Peter Skafish: anthropology; Prof. Matthew Szydagis: instrumentation and data collection; and Dr. Jennice Vilhauer: quantitative psychology.
This constitutes an amazing A-team with exceptional scientists. Including at least one member with a skeptical perspective (or a designated “devil’s advocate”) in every committee is highly important. The skeptic prevents blind spots, reduces cognitive biases, and actively protects groups from disastrous decision-making as a result of groupthink. The goal of the council is to advise the U.S. government on how to resolve the nature of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs).
So far, there were three batches of UAP files released on May 8, May 22, and June 12, 2026. The latest UAP file release includes a new report (accessible here) dated June 5, 2026, signed by Dr. Jon Kosloski — AARO’s director. The report mentions that during two days in October 2023 law enforcement officials noticed anomalous phenomena including an orange “mother” orb launching smaller red orbs. About 40% of the reported phenomena lack a reasonable explanation and remain unresolved.
The civil duty of scientists like myself is to serve the U.S. government by interpreting existing data or recommending how to get new data that would resolve the nature of UAPs. This is a detective story that can be resolved with better data. All the data shared with the council will be unclassified.
The council will report to a higher-level UAP Governance Board that aims to provide guidance, recommendations and coordination at the interagency level, bringing together military, law enforcement, the Intelligence Community, and other civilian agencies. The mission of the UAP Governing Board is to serve as an interagency body that can use each member’s capabilities and unique authorities to cohesively address national security threats posed by UAP. The Governing Board will also integrate and optimize interagency processes involved in the investigation of UAP incidents and collection procedures used to analyze UAP data to ensure more effective support to AARO. The UAP Governing Board, which will get advice from the Science council as well as other committees, will assist in the timely coordination of declassification of UAP-related information, in accordance with Executive Order 13526, Classified National Security Information.
I am honored to serve my country and help AARO resolve the UAP mystery.
2. What work and support will the council bring to the Defense Department and US military? Please speak to the national security angle here and what the council will offer in that capacity.
The down-to-Earth interpretation of UAP is that we are dealing with human made technologies. In this case, the defense system of the U.S. against espionage on strategic assets is being compromised. We know about the Chinese spy balloon that was shot down in 2023. When finding an ant on the kitchen cabinet, we get alarmed because we realize that there must be many more ants hiding elsewhere in the kitchen. If the orbs in AARO’s report represent unknown technologies employed by adversarial nations, then they represent a serious breach of national security. Resolving their nature is a high priority for the U.S. government, requiring the development of better sensors and AI algorithms to collect and interpret new data.
3. How did this new group of advisors come together?
The team was selected to fulfil the task of the council in solving the mystery of UAPs through the scientific method. Since UAPs are physical objects that interact with humans, the council includes members with expertise in physical sciences as well as psychology and biology. All members had an intense interest in the scientific study of UAPs for many years. In my case, over the past five years I led the Galileo Project at Harvard University in search for extraterrestrial technological artifacts near Earth. By now, our research team operates three observatories which collect and analyze data on millions of objects, in an attempt to search for outliers outside the performance envelope of human-made technologies. This search is different from traditional SETI which had been searching for extraterrestrial technological radio signals over the past 66 years. The disparity between the search methods is akin to the difference between searching our mailbox for packages compared to waiting for a phone call
4. How often is the UAP Science Advisory Council meeting? And what do you need from the administration to be successful in the near-term?
The frequency of the council’s meetings is yet to be decided. We will make the best use of the data we are given. The quality of our conclusions will depend on the fidelity of the data we process.
5. Is there anything else worth noting or that you would like to add?
My past leadership positions included service as director of Harvard’s Institute for Theory and Computation (2005–2026), founding director of Harvard’s Black Hole Initiative (2016–2020), chair of the Harvard Astronomy department (2011–2020), chair of the Board of Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies (2018–2021), and member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) in the White House (2019–2020). My leadership style promotes transparency and trust. This is why I was the longest serving chair (for three terms of 3 years) in the history of Harvard’s Astronomy department. I will do my best in leading the council based on my experience in scientific research over the past forty years, with over a thousand scientific papers and nine books.
The best is yet to come. Stay tuned to future updates.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Avi Loeb is the head of the UAP Science Advisory Council to the White House, Pentagon, FBI and intelligence agencies, director of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, former director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.
Professional website:
https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/
Social media:
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfessorAviLoeb
https://open.spotify.com/show/1zhndXkvSY2b8FdjspFpCd
https://x.com/ProfAviLoeb
