The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), of Laurel, and the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO), headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands, have signed a memorandum of understanding, officially establishing a transatlantic collaboration between the two organizations that has been developing for nearly a decade.
APL and TNO focus on applied research, giving them a natural common foundation on which to build their new collaboration.
The memorandum will enable technical experts from both organizations to work together either remotely or in person on internally funded projects that range from space technologies to artificial intelligence to human-machine interfacing. Through this exchange of expertise and information, APL and TNO aim to bolster creative international partnerships and accelerate progress in applied scientific research and technology development.
APL and TNO have worked collaboratively on various projects for government and business sponsors. Previous research collaborations have accelerated the science and technology development in the areas of defense and security.
Most recently, the two organizations established a collaboration for monitoring atmospheric pollutants with unprecedented detail using the Compact Hyperspectral Air Pollution Sensor (CHAPS) instrument, the design of which combines APL’s expertise in hyperspectral imagers with TNO’s expertise in space spectrometers and freeform optics. The team is currently developing a demonstrator of this instrument, called CHAPS-D.
Through the memorandum of understanding, APL and TNO envision expanding collaborations to other space fields, including satellite communications, Earth and planetary science, heliophysics and exoplanet research, as well as other disciplines, such as precision medicine, chemical detection, autonomy, neuroscience and additive manufacturing.