2025 PNT Symposium
Our 19th annual PNT symposium was held Wednesday, October 8th and Thursday, October 9th, 2025.
Once again this year, the symposium was held in-person in the Kavli Auditorium at the SLAC National Laboratory above the Stanford University campus.
Also, as in past years, in addition to in-person presentations and symposium attendees in the Kavli Auditorium, we also provided a virtual (e.g live stream/video) option for those participants who could not or prefered not to attend in person.
2025 PNT Symposium Photo Gallery
Click Here to view photos from the 2025 PNT Symposium
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2025 PNT Symposium Speakers
As is our tradition, Day 1 of the symposium featured student speakers from various graduate schools around the country. Click here to skip down to the symposium day 1 table of Student Speakers towards the bottom of this page.
On Day 2 of the symposium, we invited a variety of prominent US and international academic, business and government leaders to speak on their PNT related research and development efforts. Invitees included US Government representatives, Industry representatives, academic representatives and a few speakers with a unique PNT perspective. Click here to skip down to the table of this year's invited speakers towards the bottom of this page.
2025 PNT Symposium Attendees
The 2025 PNT Symposium attendees were a cross-mixture of the PNT Community, including:
Stanford faculty, researchers and grad students
U.S. Government representatives,
SCPNT Industrial Member representatives (Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Northrop Grumman, Qualcomm, Trimble Navigation, L3Harris, Polaris Wireless, etc.)
- Other invited guests
2025 PNT Symposium Schedule at a Glance
Wednesday, October 8th , 9:00 AM–5:00 PM: Invited Student Presentations
Thursday, October 9th , 8:00 AM–5:00 PM: Invited Speaker Presentations
Thursday Evening, October 9th , 6:30–8:30 PM: Reception and Banquet Dinner at the Faculty Club on the Stanford campus, featuring a talk by Stanford Professor Manu Prakash
As in past PNT symposia, the first day featured student presentations, and the second day featured invited presentations. This year, the reception and banquet dinner, featuring a talk by Stanford Professor Manu Prakash, were held on Thursday evening, October 9th.
2025 Symposium Banquet Dinner Presentation
During the banquet dinner on Thursday evening, October 9th, Stanford Professor Manu Prakash gave a most interesting talk on Ballistic Microscopy (BaM).
Stanford Professor Manu Prakash
Areas of Focus: Bioengineering and Biotechnology, Invention and Adaptive Technology, Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology
Banquet Dinner Topic: Ballistic Microscopy (BaM).
Abstract: Light and electron microscopy utilizes interactions of either photons or electrons with matter to create images from cellular to atomic scale. However, these methods are limited in de novo discovery and spatial mapping of unknown biomolecules. Label free methods such as mass spectrometry or sequencing lack live-cell and subcellular context. Here we introduce a new approach, Ballistic Microscopy (BaM), to image cells with physical nanoparticles. We bombard living cells with millions of nanoparticles traveling at 1000 m/s. Each particle passes through cells, piercing and capturing attoliters of cytoplasm on a hydrogel substrate while preserving spatial information (SPLAT-MAP). This "physical image" of a live cell captures a molecular fingerprint of a cell on a hydrogel film that can be processed post-capture via multiple techniques such as TEM, Cryo-EM, mass spectrometry, confocal imaging, and DNA amplification. Using BaM, we discover previously unknown composition of CLIP170 and Tau3R condensates in HEK cells, uncovering Keratin-18 as a structural element. BaM establishes a new paradigm of "physical imaging" with modular readout platform for spatially resolved live sampling across cells, tissues, and organisms.
Professor Prakash Bio: Manu Prakash is a physical biologist applying his expertise in soft-matter physics to illuminate often easy to observe but hard to explain phenomena in biological and physical contexts and to invent solutions to difficult problems in global health, science education, and ecological surveillance. His many lines of research are driven by curiosity about the diversity of life forms on our planet and how they work, empathy for problems in resource-poor settings, and a deep interest in democratizing the experience and joy of science globally.
Student and Invited Speaker Presentation Tables
The tables below display the invited speaker presentations from both days of the 2025 PNT Symposium. In both tables, the presentations are listed alphabetically by the presenter's last name.
While all of the presentations were recorded on both days of the 2025 symposium, we have only received permission from some of the speakers to display their video presentation and/or a PDF file of their presentation slides.
For those presentations which we are permitted to display the video, click on the Play Video button preceding the presentation title to view an unlisted (not searchable) video of that presentation on YouTube.
Also, for presentations in which we are permitted to display the slides, click on that presentation title (blue text) to view/download the presentation PDF or PowerPoint PPT file.
2025 PNT Symposium: October 8th — Student Presentations
Name | Affiliation |
| Presentation Title |
| Gytis Blintrubas | Illinois Institute of Technology | Amplitude Scintillation in the Auroral Region Detected by Calculating High-Rate Scintillation Indices | |
| Sergio Coll Ibars | University of Colorado Boulder | 
| Autonomous Space Navigation Using Quantum Sensors |
| Adam Dai | Stanford University |
| Full Stack Navigation, Mapping, and Planning for the Lunar Autonomy Challenge |
| Tyler Flegel | Auburn University | Vision Transformer for Localizing a Ground Vehicle on an Aerial Map: Preliminary Results and Considerations | |
| Elek Kozma | Auburn University | Performance of AltBOC Acquisition Algorithms under Multipath | |
| Yufang (Frank) Lai | Stanford University |
| Ground-Based Integrity Monitor Precise GNSS |
| Jason Li | University of Colorado Boulder |
| Ionospheric Scintillation Observation on Signals of Opportunity Transmitted from LEO Satellites |
| Albert Lin | Stanford University |
| Safe Navigation under Environmental Uncertainties via Hamilton-Jacobi Reachability Analysis |
| Jacob Spagnolli | University of Colorado Boulder |
| Performance Analysis of Network Positioning in Android Smartphones |
| Andrew Klkyoung Sun | KAIST |
| Error modeling framework for GBAS integrity undr ionospheric scintillation |
| Cheng-Wei Wang | National Cheng Kung University |
| Augmented MADOCA-PPP-RTK with Tightly Coupled INS: A Case Study in Downtown Tokyo |
| Yiding Zhan | NCKU |
| Double-Differenced TDoA Heading Constraint: A Low-Drift localization |
2025 PNT Symposium: October 9th — Invited Presentations
Name | Affiliation | Play Video | Presentation Title |
| Alexandre Bayen | University of California, Berkeley |
| Mixed-autonomy at scale: how to use automated vehicles to control traffic on freeways |
| Robert Barlow | Reliable Robotics | Reliable Robotics: Making Gate-to-Gate Fully Autonomous Flight a Mundane Reality | |
| Mark Crews | Lockheed Martin | Support to PNT Mission | |
| Joshua Egbert | Zoox | Adapting control and localization requirements for the Zoox autonomous vehicle for different situations | |
| Anton Ermakov | Stanford University | From geodesy to geophysics: unlocking planetary internal structures with geodetic observations | |
| Grace Gao | Stanford University | Designing Lunar Navigation Satellite Systems | |
| Leo Holberg | Stanford University | Optical Fiber Sensing of Earth/Ocean Dynamics | |
| Jade Morton | University of Colorado, Boulder |
| Filling the Data Void in Ionosphere and Space Weather Monitoring |
| Brad Parkinson | Stanford University |
| Assured PNT Status & Perspectives |
| Giancarlo Troni | MBARI | Scalable Marine Robotics for Ocean Exploration | |
| Chris Varuolo | FEI | Next-Generation Atomic Clocks and Quantum Sensors for PNT | |
| Manu Prakash | Dinner Speaker | Ballistic Microscopy (BaM) |
Contact Us
If you need more information about this year’s PNT symposium, or if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us:
Sherman Lo, SCPNT Executive Director
Phone: (650) 725-9175
Email: sherman.lo@stanford.edu