Location, Location, Location!

The Advanced Studies Laboratories includes a consortium of member Affiliates. Its activities take place in NASA ARC's facility in Building N239. These factors influence the nature of included research efforts and collaborative opportunities. The environment ASL has created within N239 encourages shared-use, open-access, and, therefore, creativity through innovation and alternate approaches.

Planting seeds changes the landscape...Forever!

Time and again, basic research yields returns far out of proportion to the initial cost outlay. Increasingly, the most exciting new findings come from discoveries made at the interface between traditional disciplines.

The revolution launched in California’s Silicon Valley has had far-reaching impacts on every aspect of our daily lives. Basic research in computer science, engineering, and advanced understanding of the physics and chemistry of materials pushed open the frontiers of personal and enterprise computing and telecommunications, and have made the world a linked global economy. Today, we live on a planet whose inhabitants are more interconnected and interdependent than ever before.

NASA, along with the world’s other space agencies, is at the forefront of another revolution. Space missions and planetary exploration have transformed our ideas of humanity’s role on our own planet, and in the Universe. In recent decades, we have observed other planets orbiting other stars and seen real images of other potentially habitable environments in our own Solar System (Mars, Europa, Titan, Enceladus, Callisto). Astrophysicists have measured the age of the Universe. Astrobiologists, who study the origins, distribution, and evolution of life, have written new chapters in the history of life on Earth.

ASL’s Strategy

ASL’s strategy envisions leveraging the strengths of its composite of public-funded, privately sponsored, and academically focused science and engineering research in a ‘value-added’ approach. Our mix of Affiliates offers joint education and training opportunities through its academic partners. Its shared-use architecture allows Affiliates to alter the parameters of traditional cost/risk/benefit management. By accessing expertise and specialized equipment contributed by other Affiliates, participants in ASL may undertake work that would otherwise remain outside their functional envelope.

ASL is working to create a model institution that delivers discovery-focused research innovations and enhances the effective deployment of novel technologies for the public good.

ASL Affiliates include investigators from NASA, the University of California (Santa Cruz, Berkeley, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles), Stanford University, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Santa Clara University, San Jose State University, Lockheed Martin Engineering and Space Science, Foothill and De Anza Community Colleges, and other institutions.