about my session
From Soil and Metal Samples, to Photographs, to AI Images & Animations: Ufology Benefits From New Tools
The past is prologue, they say. Meaning, what has been done in the past can inform the present. What UFO cases from the past have benefitted from a fresh scientific review and what were the fruits of those efforts?
TODAY’S INVESTIGATIVE TOOLS, NEW DATABASES, AI AND MORE
What other tools and approaches can be leveraged today? As an artist, I have started employing AI imaging tools to bring witness descriptions to life as rendered images, much quicker than it takes to start from scratch in a drawing program or PhotoShop.
I will be discussing several historic cases and how these new tools are assisting investigators to understand and glean new data and finding new answers to old questions. Hopefully, MUFON researchers will harness the power of AI and emerging web tools to quickly render images and animations so that witnesses will be able to say, “That matches what I saw!” I’ll showcase some of these images that help us to visualize the UAPs, the entities and the environments they operate in. These images will allow us to communicate the nature of these sightings and help solve the mystery.
Bio:
SUSAN SWIATEK, MUFON Virginia State Director
CONTACT: Email: susan.swiatek@gmail.com
Susan Swiatek was born in Washington, DC, yet spent her childhood from three to twelve growing up near Denver, Colorado. Susan’s early years were spent gazing up at the Milky Way while camping with her family in the Rockies. All those visible galaxies, stars and potential worlds led her to think there must be other sentient life out there. This core idea has never left her.
In 1966, Betty and Barney Hill’s “interrupted journey” from 1961 exploded onto the pages of Look Magazine. Even as a small child, Susan was convinced that this case meant the UFO and abduction mysteries were very serious. She consumed everything in the school library on UFOs and other anomalies. Susan was later greatly influenced by the writings of researchers Budd Hopkins and Dr. David Jacobs, whom she later knew as colleagues and friends.
In 1970, her family moved back to a suburb of the nation’s capital, and she currently resides in Fairfax, Virginia. Susan met the folks from the DC-based Fund for UFO Research (FUFOR) after watching a June 24, 1987 episode of Ted Koppell’s Nightline Show on ABC. The show commemorated the 40-year anniversary of the famous Kenneth Arnold sighting of nine objects near Mt. Rainier, ushering in the modern UFO era. The show featured famed UFO expert Stan Friedman, as well as vocal debunker Phillip Klass in connection with a UFO Symposium in Washington, DC the upcoming weekend, though no details were given.
Prior to the internet, email and smartphones, it was very difficult to find out about “fringe” groups of any kind. As luck would have it, her roommate’s boyfriend was the Assistant Director for Nightline. So, Sue found out the conference was being held at American University in DC. In attending the Symposium, she got to speak to both Friedman and Klass and picked up literature from the Fund for UFO Research (FUFOR). What a delight to realize organizations were taking the UFO mystery seriously and there were meetings of like-minded people!
FUFOR was made up of legendary NICAP researchers/authors such as Richard Hall, Don Berliner and Dr. Bruce Maccabee. Susan kept in touch with the group and met Rob Swiatek, a member of the Executive Committee. The two hit it off, and were soon investigating witnesses claiming to have suffered abductions. With a notepad, camera and tape recorder, the two collected data for FUFOR’s preliminary abduction report. The couple married in 1994. Susan organized the 1999 Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) International Symposium just outside Washington, DC in Arlington, VA, which had over 600 attendees. Susan has served as MUFON VA State Director since the summer of 2002. She has also organized an annual conference for the Inter-National Fortean Organization (INFO) since 2014, as well as sponsored numerous local UFO conferences and speakers.
Susan collaborated with others to launch the PDF magazine Journal of Abduction-Encounter Research (JAR) in 2007, which continues today in an online form. Sue has lectured widely and her artwork and writing has appeared in many books such as Ron Story’s Extraterrestrial Encyclopedia, Richard Hall’s The UFO Evidence Part II and MUFON 50 Years 1969-2019. She has created many covers and performed quality control work for FUFOR and UFO Research Coalition publications, such as Delphos, and Near Miss With a UFO: Swissair Flight 127. Delphos details the 1971 Delphos, Kansas, physical trace case, while Near Miss discusses an airliner’s 1997 near collision with an anomalous white cylinder over New York.
Susan holds a BFA degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, and followed that up with a six-month technology immersion program. She has worked as a technical editor and in quality assurance supporting various federal agencies in DoD and in the health sciences.
