From Rural Appalachia
to DARPA Innovation

I founded Shilling Forge in 2022 to consolidate my advisory work into a single practice. I help startups, nonprofits, philanthropies, and global initiatives apply emerging technology responsibly — drawing on DARPA and ARPA-style R&D management methods I've used throughout my federal career and now help philanthropies adapt for their own innovation portfolios.

The practice focuses on three areas: conversational agents and chatbots for mental health and education, extending 17 years of R&D I first began at ONR and DARPA; AI policy, particularly the safe and equitable use of AI in education; and serious games and immersive learning, building on earlier work with Sesame Workshop, America's Army, and DARPA's educational game portfolios.

Other recent engagements include Senior Innovation Consultant at MDRC, helping adapt DARPA-inspired management practices for Gates Foundation Pre-K Assessment initiatives, and Senior Advisor to the VA Office of Health Innovation and Learning (OHIL) through May 2024, advising on emerging-technology strategy for veteran health programs. Earlier, as EVP for Research at a Seoul-based AI education company, I led education policy, strategy, and R&D for their AI-powered learning platform and advised leadership on their $175M SoftBank Vision Fund investment.

When both my sons were diagnosed with autism, everything changed. Suddenly I wasn't studying these problems from the outside. I was a father navigating a system that too often fails families like mine. Every meeting about accessibility, every conversation about inclusive design, every policy discussion about neurodiversity now carries that lived experience.

I serve on the Medical and Science Advisory Committee at Autism Speaks, advising on how immersive technology (VR/AR) and AI can support accessibility, health, and independent living for autistic people and their families. As a parent raising two adult sons on the spectrum, I keep the research grounded in what families need.

In 2025, I advised on the format and speakers for the Autism Technology Conference in Doha, co-hosted by Qatar Foundation, and spoke at the event on accessibility and inclusion. Later that year, I joined a United Nations panel to discuss the outcomes of the Doha conference and their implications for global policy. My wife Elaine and I also speak at events supporting respite care programs like Jill's House.

Impact: That work contributed directly to the launch of the Global Autism Advocacy Coalition — founded by Qatar Foundation, WHO, UNICEF, and Autism Speaks — announced at the UN General Assembly in September 2025. The coalition is now shaping a shared R&D agenda on inclusive technology across its partner organizations.

MindTrust (Senior Innovation Advisor): I advised on a partnership between Sesame Workshop and Roblox that produced Magical Beastie Quest, an educational Roblox game featuring Sesame Street characters, and continue to advise on educational game initiatives with Project Lead the Way.

EdSafe AI Alliance (Senior Advisor): I advise on national and international policy for responsible AI in education, working to ensure the technology is safe, effective, and does not widen existing gaps.

MVMT Ventures (Founding Advisor): I sit on the founding advisory board of a venture studio focused on accessibility startups and social impact, advising on investment decisions and supporting portfolio companies as they develop.

I serve as Senior Innovation Advisor at Sidekick Platform, drawing on 17+ years of R&D with conversational agents for education and mental health. The work focuses on translating ethical AI guidelines into product features, ensuring human-in-the-loop oversight, leading on accessibility and ethical design, and building for students, neurodivergent users, and veterans — holding the product to the standards of evidence-based behavioral intervention.

This work extends a research arc I first published on in Rizzo, Shilling, et al., Autonomous virtual human agents for healthcare information support and clinical interviewing (in Artificial Intelligence in Behavioral and Mental Health Care, Academic Press, 2016). An updated chapter reflecting the last decade of progress in generative AI and conversational agents is currently under review.

I am a proud Wake Forest University graduate with a B.A. in Psychology. After graduating I did a short stint working in a neuroscience lab at Bowman Gray School of Medicine assisting with hippocampal research. Deciding I wanted to do more, I pursued my Ph.D. at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro where I built videogames to study auditory processing in children and adults. After completing my doctorate in 1992, I turned down various postdoctoral offers and took an unexpected path: joining the Navy to broaden my expertise beyond the lab.

After completing my Ph.D. at UNC Greensboro, I turned down postdoctoral offers and commissioned into the Navy as a Lieutenant in the Aerospace Experimental Psychology pipeline. The Navy sent me through training at the Naval Aerospace Medical Institute (NAMI) — the same pipeline as Navy Flight Surgeons — including basic flight instruction in rotary wing aircraft, aviation physiology, water survival, ejection seat procedures, and military flight operations.

Over the next 22 years, I served at duty stations across the country — Pensacola, Orlando, Colorado Springs, Monterey, and Washington D.C. My first assignment at the Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division (NAWCTSD) in Orlando had me managing aviation simulation research and conducting early work on spatial 3D auditory displays for attack helicopters and VR simulations. From there, I worked across virtual reality training and therapy, human factors research, medical training technologies, pandemic response, and hearing protection. I progressed from Lieutenant to Captain while learning to move research through the pipeline to deployed capability across the services.

My academic career ran through two military institutions. U.S. Air Force Academy: I taught Psychology, Human Factors, Statistics, Leadership, and Neuropsychology in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership, and ran research on simulation and emotion in collaboration with THX and Skywalker Sound. Naval Postgraduate School: I moved to the MOVES Institute as Associate Professor and Technical Director, translating research in virtual environments and simulation into practical military training tools. I also supervised graduate theses on spatial audio, virtual environments, and immersive training for active-duty officers pursuing advanced degrees.

At NPS, I served as the Sound Designer for America's Army, one of the earliest serious games produced by the federal government. I developed the sound design — weapons, explosions, voice acting — for a title that grew to over 13 million registered users and achieved Dolby Certification. The work was nominated for Best Sound in a Videogame by GameSpot in 2002.

As Program Officer at ONR, I managed $45M+/year across psychological health, traumatic brain injury, hearing protection, medical training, and pandemic response. I launched the Department of Defense's first Virtual Reality Therapy program for PTSD and the first DoD-funded work on VR for pain control. People thought I was taking a risky bet — using video game technology to treat combat trauma. But the research supported it, and service members were coming home needing help.

The portfolio also produced the DoD Influenza Model (DoDIM) for pandemic planning, advances in cochlear hair cell regeneration, and early work on videogame-based medical training.

Impact: The VR PTSD program is now in over 70 Veterans Affairs clinics, and both VR exposure therapy and VR pain management have since become established clinical tools.

Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury (2007–2010): As Executive Director for Science and Technology, I helped shape the investment strategy for a $900M congressional appropriation to improve the lives of service members, veterans, and families. I informed the design of Virtual Reality elements for the National Intrepid Center of Excellence (NICoE), integrating immersive tech into clinical care, built out research programs in medical simulation and military medicine, and seeded early work on conversational agents for mental health.

Sesame Workshop (2007–2013): I managed more than $10 million in collaborations with Sesame Street to support military children and families coping with deployment, separation, grief, and injury. Working side by side with the Sesame team, we built videos, storybooks, and apps that parents could share with their kids during some of the hardest moments of military life. Over 3 million outreach kits were distributed since 2007, reaching military families worldwide through TV, web, and mobile platforms.

As Program Officer in the Information Innovation Office (I2O), I managed over $60 million in interdisciplinary R&D projects across psychological health and STEM education. The portfolio funded early work on intelligent agents and virtual humans for mental health support, a graphic novel development program exploring comics as art therapy for PTSD, personalized educational games with novel analytics, and adaptive learning systems for diverse learners.

I built working relationships with private foundations, federal agencies, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to align national priorities.

SBIR portfolio: I ran multiple Small Business Innovation Research programs across mental health and education technology, mentoring early-stage companies through the Phase I–III development pipeline and helping them transition dual-use technology to commercial and government customers.

I joined the Obama Administration as a Senior Executive Presidential Appointee and Executive Director of STEM Initiatives, standing up the Department's first Office of STEM. With a strong team, I coordinated strategy across 60+ STEM programs and multiple federal agencies, built out 200+ public-private partnerships, and led a national initiative on Early Childhood STEM. I brought Google, Sesame Street, PBS, and Macmillan into media alliances to improve how STEM is portrayed in popular culture, and published the "STEM 2026" framework to address disparities. I also made the case for an education equivalent of DARPA, which we called ARPA-ED — a concept I've since helped several philanthropies adapt for their own R&D portfolios.

As Senior Innovation Fellow (funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative), I co-created the Advanced Education Research and Development Fund (AERDF), a $50 million R&D initiative modeled on DARPA to fund education technology for students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. The work involved aligning the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Gates Foundation, and NewSchools Venture Fund around a shared funding model — an early example of helping philanthropies operationalize ARPA-style R&D management.

I led the Science Directorate serving 118,000 members, overseeing budget, strategy, and talent for APA's science mission. I created the Office of Applied Psychology to broaden support for practitioners, engaged federal policymakers on psychological health and addiction, and helped organize the Technology, Mind, and Society Conference as a recurring venue for research on human behavior and emerging technology.