The Radiation Beam Needed for the Moon and Mars
In this episode of Micro Journeys, host Daniel Marrujo travels to the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) to explore one of the only facilities in the country capable of simulating deep-space radiation conditions on Earth. Marrujo sits down with Trevor Olsen, a nuclear engineer and physicist who has worked at the facility for over seven […]
How the CHIPS Act Is Reshaping the Future of Advanced Packaging
In this episode of Micro Journeys Inside Access, host Daniel Marrujo sits down with Jason Conrad, who leads Arizona State University’s Southwest Advanced Prototyping Hub (SWAP Hub), to examine how the United States is working to rebuild its advanced semiconductor packaging capabilities. The conversation covers Conrad’s path from a 23-year career in the semiconductor industry […]
Inside the Army’s “Wolf Pack” Munition Program
In this episode of Micro Journeys, host Daniel Marrujo sits down with Lieutenant Colonel Jim Lawson, product manager for the Long Range Precision Munition program, live at African Lion 2026. Lawson walks through the medium-range lethal variant of the Army’s launched effects ecosystem, a tube-launched, rocket-boosted munition designed to fold into a compact form factor […]
From Idea to Battlefield in Twelve Months
In this episode of Micro Journeys Inside Access, host Daniel Marrujo sits down with Benjamin Fowl, Head of Growth for Wild West Systems, at African Lion 2026 to examine a compact drone weapons platform designed to be small, fast, and difficult to detect or shoot down. The conversation covers the system’s platform-agnostic design, its field-tested […]
Out of the Lab, Onto the Battlefield
In this episode of Micro Journeys Inside Access, host Daniel Marrujo sits down with Lieutenant Colonel Ramon Leonguerrero, U.S. Army Southern European Task Force, Africa | Advanced Capabilities Directorate at African Lion 2026 in Morocco, to unpack the command and control technology powering the largest exercise AFRICOM hosts on the African continent. The conversation traces […]
Captain Ronan Sefton on the Myth of Drone Autonomy
In this episode of Micro Journeys, host Daniel Marrujo sits down with Captain Ronan Sefton at the African Forces Summit to discuss the rapid evolution of unmanned systems on the modern battlefield. A military intelligence officer by trade, Sefton has spent the last several years focused almost entirely on drone warfare, drawing lessons directly from […]
Managing Crises, Responses and Execution: Inside the JOC
In this episode of Micro Journeys Inside Access, host Daniel Marrujo steps inside the Joint Operations Center at the Royal Armed Forces base in Agadir, Morocco, the nerve center of African Lion 2026, to explore how government, industry, and academia converge to support both the multinational exercise and a live, real-world search-and-rescue mission. He’s joined […]
The Valley of Death: How the Army Saves Innovations From Dying
Lieutenant Colonel Nick Dubaz, U.S. Army Southern European Task Force, Africa| Advanced Capabilities Directorate, leads the Advanced Capabilities Directorate at the United States Army Southern European Task Force, the Army’s headquarters for Africa. In this conversation, he walks through how his team identifies capability gaps across a continent of 54 countries and more than two […]
Future Warfare: Overland AI Off-Road Autonomy
In this episode of Micro Journeys Inside Access, host Daniel Marrujo gets hands-on with Overland AI’s Ultra platform at African Lion 2026 in Tantan, Morocco, walking through the autonomous ground vehicle that soldiers in the field have nicknamed “Mufasa” and “Simba.” Built on a commercial Polaris Razor chassis and outfitted with LiDAR, cameras, GNSS receivers, […]
Building the Future, One Nanometer at a Time
Daniel Marrujo continues his tour of Brookhaven National Laboratory with a stop at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), where interim director Kevin Yager breaks down the science of building materials at the nanometer scale, from carbon nanotubes to self-assembling DNA structures. Yager also outlines CFN’s vision for an “exocortex,” a network of AI agents […]