CAS Discovery and Foresight

Mar 21, 2025

Convergent Aeronautics Solutions (CAS) Discovery identifies problems worth solving for the benefit of all.

We formulate “convergent” problems—across multiple disciplines and sectors—and build footholds toward potentially transformative opportunities in aeronautics. As aeronautics rapidly advances, it is increasingly intersecting with other sectors like energy, healthcare, emergency response, economic resilience, the space economy, and more.

CAS Discovery builds new innovation tools and methods, a workforce adept at innovation methods, and transdisciplinary teams of researchers within and beyond NASA that conduct regular “Discovery sprints”—expeditions into cross-sector topic areas that could beneficially transform aeronautics and humanity.

It is difficult to understand and effectively address stakeholders’ needs & capabilities without engaging them. Discovery, in consultation with key NASA offices and other government agencies, has honed mechanisms to lawfully and respectfully engage and invite participation from stakeholders, communities, industry, NGOs and government to collaboratively formulate complex societal challenges tied to aviation. 

Typical organizational structures limit convergence across knowledge boundaries. CAS Discovery is intentionally cross-sector and transdisciplinary because the most impactful ideas often lie at the intersection of boundaries, the borderlands where multiple disciplines and communities come together. We work to emerge multi-sector, system-of-systems challenges that integrate political, economic, social, technological, environmental, legal and ethical trends, needs, and capabilities.

Organizations have a tendency of being driven by short-term thinking and relatively short time horizons. CAS Discovery uses strategic foresight methods to examine 20 to 50-year time horizons, systematically ingesting and synthesizing signals and trends from aero and non-aero sources to envision a variety of scenarios to uncover opportunities for the future of aeronautics.

We study the ecosystems that are part of aeronautics and aerospace. This helps in broadening consideration of impacts while practicing foresight. It enhances our awareness of the environment and gives stakeholders the ability to see ripple effects across technologies, economies, communities, etc. We seek to benefit the wellness of the entire ecosystem while also benefiting the constituents.

They are the engine that propels CAS Discovery. Our cross-center Discovery sprint and foresight teams are composed of researchers from NASA’s Ames Research Center and Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, and Langley Research Center in Virginia.

They collaborate with us as subject matter experts or Discovery sprint team members to contribute their backgrounds in fields less common within NASA, such as energy, economics, anthropology, and other areas. This collaboration happens through many mechanisms, such as freelancing, crowdsourcing, interviews, webinars, and podcasts.

They are engaged in various ways and to different degrees, often co-envisioning potential futures, co-formulating problems, and co-designing solutions.

They are the glue that holds CAS Discovery together and the anti-glue that keeps our teams from getting stuck. They come from a wide range of experience, each bringing deep expertise in leading transdisciplinary teams and stakeholders through processes and methods from strategic foresight, complex systems design, human-centered design, and more.

They work with NASA line management at each Aeronautics center to bring NASA researchers and potential new PIs into CAS. CILs also host annual Wicked Wild idea pitch events to bring new problem areas and solution ideas into CAS Discovery and early Execution phases.

• Ames Research Center CIL: Ty Huang
• Armstrong Flight Research Center CIL: Matt Kearns 
• Glenn Research Center CIL: Jeffrey Chin
• Langley Research Center CIL: Devin Pugh-Thomas

They oversee Discovery sprint and strategic foresight teams, topics, and processes; new tools and continuous improvement experiments; and the overall health of the CAS innovation front-end pipeline and related strategic outputs.

• Discovery Lead: Eric Reynolds Brubaker, Langley Research Center
• Foresight Lead: Vikram Shyam, Glenn Research Center

• Rieken, E., Brubaker, E.R., Simpson, T. (2023). Approaching complex sociotechnical challenges tied to aviation. Proceedings of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA 2023) Aviation Forum, San Diego, CA.
• **Rieken, E., Bond, K., Best, R.M., Burleson, G., Brubaker, E.R. (2023). A spectrum of stakeholder perspective-taking in design. Proceedings of the International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED 2023), Bordeaux, France.  **Awarded Best Paper of ICED23   
• Richmond, R., Rieken, E., Brubaker, E.R. (2024). Operationalizing “Wickedness” as Analytical and Creative Tools to Transform Aviation. Proceedings of AIAA AVIATION Forum, Las Vegas, NV.  
• Ma, K., Moore, G., Shyam, V., Villarrubia, J., Goucher-Lambert, K., Brubaker, E.R. (2024). Human-AI Collaboration Among Engineering and Design Professionals: Three Strategies of Generative AI Use. Proceedings of the ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences (IDETC), Washington DC.  
• Shyam, V., Villarrubia, J., Finkhousen, D., Rask, J., Skaggs, K., Grondin, T., Walsh, R., et al. (2023). “Aviation 2072: Scenario Planning for Wicked Problems,” NASA Technical Memorandum.   
• Knight, A., Brubaker, E.R., Kinch, S., Best, R., Bond, K., Fichera, N., Meadows, M.S., Stancliff, M., Wagner, D., Wohl, C., Villarrubia, J. (2025). Discovery Fundamental Units: Towards A Nested Framework of Templates for Convergent Innovation. NASA Technical Memorandum. NASA-TM-20250002378. 

Share

Details