Associate Professor, University at Albany; co-lead of UAlbany Project X
Physicists at the University at Albany, New York, have announced the launch of UAlbany Project X (UAPx), a formally endowed, university-backed scientific research program dedicated to the long-term study of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP). The initiative is led by professors Kevin Knuth, Matthew Szydagis, and Cecilia Levy, and was made possible by a multi-year endowment gift from Albany-area businessman Tony Gorman, which the team states will fund operations for at least five years and support the program in perpetuity thereafter. The project was officially launched in November 2025 and was reported by The Debrief on December 2, 2025. UAlbany Project X is described as the direct academic continuation of the original nonprofit UAPx organization, which conducted a 2021 field expedition over the Santa Catalina Channel — the site of the 2004 USS Nimitz "Tic Tac" encounter — collecting optical, infrared, and other sensor data. That expedition's findings were subsequently published in the peer-reviewed journal Progress in Aerospace Sciences in 2025, co-authored by Szydagis, Knuth, and Levy. The new university program plans to expand data collection using camera arrays, diffraction gratings for spectral analysis, and magnetic and electric field instrumentation, while also increasing peer-reviewed publication output. Physicist Eric W. Davis has been named as a volunteer adjunct researcher in an advisory capacity.