On 15 August 2023, Dr Garry Nolan and Dr Peter Skafish announced the founding of the Sol Foundation from Palo Alto, California. Nolan, the Rachford and Carlota A. Harris Professor of Pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine, told The Debrief that what had been “missing” in the UAP field was “a sort of professionalization of the arena.” The Sol Foundation was incorporated as a California public benefit corporation to fill that gap: a think tank combining scientific research, policy analysis, and the study of what its co-founders describe as the philosophical and anthropological implications of unidentified anomalous phenomena.
The foundation traces its origins to 2022, when Nolan and Skafish began planning after the United States Congress received a pivotal intelligence report on UAP. The public emergence of David Grusch’s whistleblower allegations in June 2023 accelerated the timeline. Grusch, a former intelligence officer with the National Reconnaissance Office and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, served as a co-founder and initially held the role of chief operating officer before transitioning to senior founding advisor. The foundation’s legal counsel is I. Charles McCullough III, former Inspector General of the Intelligence Community.
The Research Programme
The Sol Foundation publishes two series. The White Papers of the Sol Foundation (Volume 1) include contributions from across the foundation’s network: Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet (retired) on UAP in the ocean domain; Helen McCaw on policy implications for the UK Government; Peter Skafish on executive branch secrecy and Congressional harm; and institutional papers on atmospheric and orbital threat reduction, health security considerations, and the Catholic Church’s potential response to NHI. The Science and Policy Briefings series includes Kirk McConnell’s proposal for a UAP Whistleblower Restitution Fund, drawing on his 37 years on the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee and both intelligence committees. A third briefing by Marik von Rennenkampff is described by the foundation as “the first peer-reviewed scientific analysis of possible UAP materials.”
Nolan’s own materials research predates the foundation. Beginning around 2012, individuals he has described as “people associated with the CIA and some aeronautics corporations” approached his Stanford laboratory to analyse medical cases of defence and intelligence personnel who reported health effects following UAP encounters. This led to two research tracks. The first examined MRI brain scans of approximately 100 patients, identifying anomalous over-connection of neurons between the head of the caudate and the putamen, a density five to fifteen times the normal level. For patients with pre-encounter MRIs available, the over-connections were already present, suggesting a pre-existing neurological trait. The second track applied isotopic analysis to physical materials from reported UAP incidents. In January 2022, Nolan, Jacques Vallee, Sizun Jiang, and Larry Lemke published a peer-reviewed paper in Progress in Aerospace Sciences describing analytical techniques applied to “unusual materials with potential relevance to aerospace forensics.” The paper became the journal’s most-read article.
The foundation also operates the NHI Project, a multiyear research seminar led by Skafish that brings together researchers in the humanities, social sciences, and clinical psychology to study concepts and experiences of UAP-related non-human intelligences. Four citizen science initiatives run in parallel, including a distributed UAP observation project and a passive radar research project.
The Symposia
The Sol Foundation has held three annual symposia, each expanding in scope.
The inaugural symposium took place on 17 to 18 November 2023 at the Nolan Laboratory and Stanford School of Medicine. The invitation-only gathering brought together Avi Loeb, Jacques Vallee, Colonel Karl Nell (US Army), Christopher Mellon (former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence), Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, Diana Walsh Pasulka (University of North Carolina Wilmington), Canadian Member of Parliament Larry Maguire, and I. Charles McCullough III. David Grusch made a surprise remote appearance from Washington, DC.
The second symposium convened on 22 to 23 November 2024 at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco. The speaker programme expanded to include Ryan Graves (Americans for Safe Aerospace), Leslie Kean (journalist), Yoshiharu Asakawa (General Secretary of the UAP Caucus in the Parliament of Japan), Kirk McConnell, Alexander Wendt (Ohio State University), and Beatriz Villarroel (Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics). Loeb presented new results from the Galileo Project observatory and Pacific Ocean expedition.
The third symposium moved to Baveno, on Lake Maggiore in northern Italy, from 25 to 27 October 2025, drawing approximately 500 attendees. The programme included Luc Dini of SIGMA2 (the technical commission of France’s Association Aeronautique et Astronautique) on the physical observables of UAP, General Pierre Bescond revisiting the 1999 COMETA Report, a member of the European Parliament, a representative of GEIPAN (France’s national space agency UAP investigation programme), and the Italian UAP researcher Roberto Pinotti on Italian cases from Magenta to Project Titan. The symposia’s speaker lists map the institutional connections across the disclosure landscape, from Congressional staff to active military witnesses to European government investigators.
The Advisory Network
The Sol Foundation’s advisory board functions as a map of the field’s institutional credentialled positions. Its members span the natural sciences, social sciences, government service, and intelligence:
Avi Loeb (Harvard, Galileo Project) and Kevin Knuth (SUNY Albany, physics, editor-in-chief of Entropy) represent the natural sciences. Jacques Vallee serves as emeritus advisor. Alexander Wendt (Ohio State, co-author of “Sovereignty and the UFO”) and Jeffrey Kripal (Rice University, philosophy and religious thought) represent the social sciences. Tim Gallaudet brings military oceanography and former NOAA leadership. Jim Semivan served 25 years in the CIA’s National Clandestine Service. Beatriz Villarroel leads the VASCO project at the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics, searching for anomalous transient phenomena in pre-satellite-era sky surveys.
Kirk McConnell’s 37-year career spanning the Senate Armed Services Committee and both intelligence committees provides the foundation’s direct institutional connection to Congressional oversight. McCullough’s service as Inspector General of the Intelligence Community provides its connection to the intelligence accountability architecture.
Nolan himself brings a research record of over 330 peer-reviewed papers, 50 issued patents, and eight biotech companies founded. He received Stanford University’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2024, the Keio University Medical Science Prize in 2022, and the Hans Sigrist Prize from the University of Bern in 2021 (two prior winners of which went on to receive the Nobel Prize). He serves the Sol Foundation pro bono; Stanford University rules prohibit holding officer status at outside companies.
From the Archive
The archive holds pages connected to the Sol Foundation’s advisory network:
- Avi Loeb: Harvard astrophysicist, Galileo Project head, Sol Foundation advisory board member.
- The Galileo Project: The scientific instrumentation programme that Loeb presented at Sol’s 2024 symposium.
- 'Oumuamua: The First Interstellar Object: The discovery that catalysed new institutional approaches to UAP, including both the Galileo Project and the Sol Foundation.
Related coverage:
- “Avi Loeb Asks Washington for Raw UAP Data, Not Processed Videos” (23 April 2026)
- “Luna meets Loeb at Harvard” (29 April 2026)
- “After PURSUE: scientists, witnesses and Congress weigh in on the first UAP tranche” (11 May 2026)
