SOL Foundation
The SOL Foundation (sol.org) is a non-profit research and membership organization dedicated to exploring the scientific, societal, philosophical, and cultural implications of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena and non-human intelligence. It was founded by Garry Nolan, a professor of pathology at Stanford University, and colleagues including Dr. Peter Skafish and co-founder Mara Midiria, in the early 2020s amid a surge in official government UAP acknowledgment. SOL describes itself as a community of researchers, thought leaders, and advocates dedicated to producing credible scientific, policy, and philosophical work on the UAP phenomenon.
Mission and structure
The Foundation's stated mission is to explore the scientific, societal, philosophical, and cultural implications of UAP without advocacy for any particular conclusion regarding their origin. It is organized as a membership community with tiered access. Peter S. Fish, co-founder and Director of Research and Policy, described the membership program as designed to build "a high caliber network of researchers, thought leaders, and advocates pushing the boundaries of UAP science, policy, but also philosophy." All Foundation events are open to the public without charge, with membership donations providing additional access.
Founding context
Garry Nolan co-founded SOL after years of academic UAP investigation, including analysis of alleged non-human materials provided to him through government and private channels. He framed the Foundation as a response to the difficulty of engaging mainstream academia with the subject. Initial co-development involved David Grusch, who subsequently had to withdraw due to government constraints arising from his whistleblower activities.
The Foundation grew out of what Nolan described as a need to provide a credible institutional home for UAP evidence, analogous to the way courts of law handle evidentiary standards: evidence is not proof, but it is submitted to a jury of peers.
The Sol Forum
The Sol Forum is the Foundation's primary regular meeting format — a digital broadcast combining interviews, fireside chats, and presentations by experts from science, policy, philosophy, and intelligence communities. Meetings are hosted by Peter Skafish and Mara Midiria, Director of Strategy.
Sol Forum #1: Puthoff, Vallée, and Lemke
The inaugural Sol Forum featured physicists Hal Puthoff and Jacques Vallée, along with aerospace engineer Larry Lemke — a grouping reflecting the Foundation's orientation toward researchers from within or adjacent to government scientific programs. Vallée indicated his personal research priority was opening access to medical records of UAP contact cases and examining physical and information traces left on percipients.
Research programs
UAP phenomena and historical transients
The Foundation hosted astrophysicist Beatriz Villarroel in conversation with Garry Nolan to discuss her research into historical photographic sky surveys. Villarroel's team identified transient point-source objects in archival photographic plates coinciding spatially with the 1952 1952 Washington D.C. UFO incident, suggesting the presence of orbital objects before the satellite era. The Sol Briefing, a monthly update format hosted by Peter Skafish, covered events including UAP incursions over Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in 2024.
UAPhire mental health collaboration
The Foundation coordinates with UAPhire, a UK group of professional psychiatrists who have publicly acknowledged the clinical reality of UAP contact experiences and are developing professional-standard frameworks for treating percipients.
VASCO project and orbital transients
The Foundation has hosted and co-hosted work by astronomer Beatriz Villarroel — a visiting professor at the Nordic Institute of Theoretical Physics at Stockholm University and lead scientist on the VASCO (Vanishing and Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations) project — who serves on the Foundation's advisory board and has spoken at its first two symposia (Stanford and Italy). Villarroel's research examines pre-Sputnik photographic sky survey plates for transient point-source objects and correlates these with historical UAP sightings and nuclear test dates. Her team found that transients in the survey data show a statistically significant deficit when they should appear in the Earth's umbra (shadow), consistent with orbital objects reflecting sunlight rather than plate defects: "The deficiency we see is like one-third of the sample seems to be missing in the Earth's shadow, and that's a big number." The results reached approximately 8-sigma confidence in the most refined test.
Nolan, commenting on the research during the Sol Forum, noted that the work exemplifies the Foundation's methodological standard — papers that are "scientifically done correctly, make careful note of all the methodologies that were used, come up with alternative explanations, self critique yourself, go to peer review" — and observed that this level of rigor was making UAP-adjacent work difficult to dismiss: "Almost what it does in a good way is make the paper boring... not boring in a negative sense, but so boring that they can't be critiqued because the hyperbolic claims don't become a magnet for the trolls."
Witness network
SOL Foundation conferences have served as a gathering point for military witnesses seeking to connect with researchers. Documentary filmmaker James Fox described meeting a military UAP witness — Technical Sergeant Jeffrey Nuccetelli, a 16-year Air Force military police officer — at a SOL Foundation conference; Nuccetelli had investigated a series of UAP incursions at Vandenberg Space Force Base in October 2003, including an object described as a football-field-sized red square hovering silently over a missile defense system. The case illustrates SOL's role as a trusted neutral venue for witnesses to interact with credentialed researchers outside formal government or military channels.
The Sol Symposium
Prior to the launch of the Sol Forum, the Foundation convened the Sol Symposium — a larger gathering of academics, scientists, and government-adjacent researchers. The Symposium format served as the precursor model for the ongoing Forum series. SOL's approach distinguishes it from advocacy organizations: the stated goal is to build evidence frameworks credible enough to present to scientific peers and policymakers, rather than to argue for a predetermined conclusion about UAP reality.
Notable participants
Among researchers who have engaged with SOL Foundation events and research include Hal Puthoff, Jacques Vallée, Larry Lemke, Beatriz Villarroel, David Grusch, Garry Nolan, and government officials whose names are not publicly disclosed. The Foundation has worked to bring together individuals from intelligence community backgrounds, academia, and independent research in a setting governed by scientific norms.