Risk and reward: Fuhr takes sensing technology to the next frontier… again

Peter Fuhr’s work in science is often visible passing through the night sky overhead. NASA satellites, launched at the beginning of his long career, still carry the semiconductor laser diode arrays that he helped build. They capture measurements such as variations in Earth’s gravitational field which affect its distance from the moon. 

Now a researcher and group leader at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Fuhr continues to push the boundaries of optical and sensor technology in applications ranging from fighting wildfires to operating the immense floodgates protecting Venice, Italy. Fuhr’s path is marked by an oddball creativity that can’t confine itself to challenges in a single field. No idea is too far out to try out. His many inventions and start-ups before joining ORNL proved his ability to bring bold ideas to life.

Fuhr has installed sensors in some surprising places: rappelling down dam faces with a battery-powered circular saw, in the Old Faithful geyser at Yellowstone, and even inside humans. He invented a sensor to detect mad cow disease in the exhalations of bovine breath. Fuhr investigated how to feed a cotton plant so it produces electrically conductive fibers, enabling more security features in paper money. If his research topics have a theme, it’s practicality – solving real-world problems in real time.

Fuhr’s pioneering work in networked sensor systems for structures earned him the Presidential Award for Excellence in Research. He was also recognized as a lifetime senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and a Fellow of the International Society for Automation. His influence is likely to be lasting, as his imagination and infectious zeal have driven him to mentor generations of new engineers. 

In chaos, there’s opportunity

Fuhr remembers the moment it all started. At age 6, watching the sole TV channel available in his small northern Minnesota town, he saw a news report about the invention of the laser. Young Peter scrambled to cut a hole in a shoebox, placed a flashlight inside, and told his family: “I’m going to build lasers.”

He never wavered. Fuhr went on to attend one of the largest high schools in the country in Indianapolis, Indiana. Its size made it unwieldy and chaotic, but the variety of available course laid the foundation for him to earn degrees in physics and mathematics at Beloit College. 

“In chaos, there’s opportunity,” Fuhr says. (It could be his motto.)

After college, Fuhr took a job as a space optical physicist for a NASA contractor and then became a full employee at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center – while pursuing advanced degrees in electrical engineering. It was here that he worked on the satellite laser diode project while also writing his dissertation at Johns Hopkins University on intersatellite optical communication using laser diode arrays. 

Fuhr mentored interns even while a graduate student at NASA. “I got bitten and smitten by that bug,” he said. “I love the different perspectives and the youthful enthusiasm associated with students and young researchers.” After a brief stint with industry designing laser diodes for telescopes, Fuhr turned to teaching, first at the University of Vermont and then at San Jose State University in California.

In Vermont, Fuhr developed a fiber optic sensor to be placed inside a person. It was made to gauge strain in the fabric threads used for ACL replacements. Tracked over several years, the sensor data helped surgeons understand how much to tighten the screws securing the tendon replacement for restoring both immediate range of motion and long-term control. Initially tested in grocery store chicken wings, the sensor later had a personal impact when Fuhr’s wife tore both of her ACLs. Her doctor in California had read Fuhr’s research and utilized its findings in her treatment.

At San Jose State, Fuhr founded the Institute for Sensors and Wireless Networking, a research and development center on 20 acres within NASA’s Ames Research Center. Fuhr supervised 33 faculty members who were tackling research in sensors, fiber optic and wireless communications, and photonic systems and components. 

In those days, Wi-Fi was young. Fuhr helped link the powerful telescopes outside San Jose directly to NASA. “We built the longest-distance, highest-speed communication system on the planet at the time,” he said. “That was absolutely fun.”

 Ready for a break from the university environment, Fuhr became chief scientist for a company that used wireless chemical sensors to check cargo ships for bombs and facilitate customs inspections from offshore. He then founded several companies based on concepts that intrigued him, like distortion in fiber optic signals or the ability to see radio waves. The businesses translated these ideas into practical solutions for timely problems by developing wireless systems for industrial automation, sensors for mad cow disease and sensors detecting either cell phones in prisons or roadside bombs in war zones.

Demonstrations of these technologies for the U.S. government led the DOE to invite Fuhr to provide Congressional briefings about industrial wireless sensing systems. This expertise brought him to the attention of ORNL, which recruited Fuhr in 2010. He now leads the Grid Communications and Sensing group in the Energy and Technology Sciences Directorate, with a dual research faculty appointment at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and its Bredesen Center. 

Building teams, taking risks

At ORNL, Fuhr spearheaded a national grid timing and cybersecurity initiative and helped build a close research relationship with innovative utility partner EPB of Chattanooga. At ORNL’s Hardin Valley campus, Fuhr founded the Grid Operations and Analytics Laboratory, or GOAL, with a 10-gigabyte-per-second direct fiber optic link to EPB for real-time data feeds. Modeled on a utility command center, GOAL acts as a test bed for grid monitoring and cybersecurity breakthroughs.

Inspired by synesthesia, a condition that causes some people to experience one sense through another, Fuhr recently invented a method to encrypt grid communication data into a constantly-changing color palette. The colors were further hidden within digital images and tested with EPB using the GOAL fiber link. This spring, Fuhr’s team demonstrated at EPB a drone-based sensing approach for inspecting power grid equipment.

Fuhr has seen the rise of new technologies from lasers to the internet, Wi-Fi and drones. Yet he never tires of applying the newest tech to tackle the newest challenge – now artificial intelligence, quantum communications and virtual reality. 

“What interests me is the intersection of different technologies,” Fuhr said. “This is a great moment with better, cheaper batteries, microcontrollers, the Internet of Things – here I can bring all these innovations together.” 

That dynamic mixing is fruitful partly because of the eclectic group of people he also brings together in a collaborative atmosphere. Fuhr’s team often spends time elbow-to-elbow around a big table, whether head-down in independent projects or wisecracking their way through a brainstorming session. When choices must be made about next steps in the research. Fuhr asks each person to evaluate the options and contribute their opinions. The group usually reaches a natural consensus that makes a vote unnecessary – although Fuhr may hold one anyway. 

Everyone’s input receives equal consideration, including feedback from the team’s many early-career researchers and the rotating lineup of UT graduate students. Fuhr incorporates opportunities into each project to fill gaps in their expertise and build their skills, growing the next generation of innovators.

He also shapes a creative space for their ideas to flow. Behind the collaboration table in the GOAL lab looms a metal contraption resembling a tangle of shiny pipe joints, which Fuhr found in the excess pile from another lab. With modulating colored lights inside, it now resembles a cross between a lava lamp and a Star Trek refugee, embodying the spirit of whimsy and imagination that Fuhr encourages among team members.

The moment someone steps into the lab, Fuhr poses a wacky question with a straight face – and just a little eyebrow waggle. He might ask, ‘Did you ever ponder the best gift you could give your favorite boutique deli?” (He did. He explains how he designed and constructed a laser-based ham slicer.) Or did he ever tell you about that time he watched his high-altitude research balloon fall from 120,000 feet, waiting for it to crash into a school or church? (Rice plants were the only casualties.)

Fuhr’s madcap project summaries, big bowls of candy and giant screens scrolling dramatic research footage make the GOAL lab a popular tour stop for visitors and government officials. But even without this colorful scenery, the ideas he explains are intriguing. By his own admission, 70% of his projects are “way out there” -- either literally with satellites and atmospheric balloons, or figuratively with haptic glove controls and a ballet of automated inspection drones.

But that’s how Fuhr thinks it should be. He believes in the principle that science involves risk. Why try something if you already know it will work? 

Flipping through futuristic images of grid sensing tools under development, Fuhr added, “It’s a stretch, yeah -- but it’s cool. Who else is doing stuff like this?”

UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.