UConn Joins Homeland Security Effort
UCONN
Norwalk Hour
Erin Kutz
Boston University Washington News Service
March 21, 2008
WASHINGTON – The University of Connecticut is taking a leadership role in developing national transportation solutions for everything from bridge collapses to evacuations during natural disasters or terrorist attacks.
In late February, the Department of Homeland Security announced the Connecticut Transportation Institute at UConn’s School of Engineering would co-lead the department’s Center for Transportation Security, with Tougaloo College and Texas Southern University. Long Island University, Rutgers University, San Jose State University and the University of Arkansas also will contribute.
The transportation center is one of 13 Centers of Excellence established by the Department of Homeland Security to work on issues such as food protection, port security, emergency management, explosives detection and border security.
This week, faculty members from all of the schools in all of the Centers of Excellence met in Washington with department officials to establish the research network’s next steps.
Mehdi Anwar, associate dean for research and graduate education at UConn’s School of Engineering, noted the importance of the various universities and the Department of Homeland Security cooperating in their work.
“We are a team and will work together to deliver what is required of us,” said Anwar, who attended the Washington meetings. “We can have all this technology, but if we do not have the policy in place, things are not properly implemented.”
Paul Schneider, acting deputy secretary of homeland security, lauded the numerous centers as valuable, long-term investments in homeland security, when he addressed the participants Thursday.
“The challenge is we have is to harness the brainpower that exists in your activities,” he said.
The department has allocated $4 million to the transportation center with UConn receiving at least $500,000 for the project.
“These Centers of Excellence encourage our country’s best and brightest to come together for the good of the country to work on solutions to some of the toughest issues we will face in our lifetime,” said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., who is chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “This award is confirmation that the University of Connecticut has been and will continue to be a leader in the field of transportation security research.”
Anwar said the center will work to develop technology for sensors that would pinpoint fatigued transportation structures and potentially prevent disasters such as the Minnesota bridge collapse.
Additionally, the center is interested in exploring use of generators on trains that can function off the grid power and developing buses for emergency evacuation that can run without gasoline, Anwar said, noting the impasse New Orleans residents faced when their cars ran out of gas during Hurricane Katrina evacuations.
The UConn center will employ faculty researchers as well as undergraduate and graduate students and will reach out to industry leaders and other universities who could bring something to the mission, Anwar said. It would create new jobs in a range of fields, including technology, policy and psychology, he added.
While touting the homeland security implications of the participating universities, Schneider noted an additional benefit of the research networks.
“Equally as important is the contribution these are going to make to help reinvigorate the science and technology base of the country,” he said.
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