Industrial Collaboration

ALERT takes advantage of existing relevant research strengths of The Bernard M. Gordon Center for Subsurface Sensing and Imaging Systems (Gordon-CenSSIS). Gordon-CenSSIS is an existing NSF-funded Engineering Research Center, with a mission to develop new technologies to detect hidden objects and to use those technologies to meet real-world societal challenges in areas as diverse as noninvasive breast cancer detection or underground pollution assessment.

The ERC is supported by and collaborates actively with 20 affiliate organizations representing sectors such as: Medical Imaging (Analogic, Siemens, Hologic, Massachusetts General Hospital), Defense and Intelligence (American Science & Engineering, Raytheon, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, Lockheed Martin, Textron Systems, INL and LLNL), Civil and Environmental Sensing (TransTech, Boston Groundwater Trust, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Geophysical Survey Systems), and Advanced Computation and Data Handling. In its seven-year history, Gordon-CenSSIS has produced 289 refereed papers, 426 conference publications and graduated 88 PhD and 31 MS students.

Gordon-CenSSIS has an outstanding track record for creating effective university-industry teams oriented to address important DHS problems. One example is the Advanced Spectroscopic High Energy Radiation Detector (ASHERD) Program to detect threatening nuclear material in truck and shipboard containers. An NU-led team in combination with Bubble Technologies Inc. (BTI), a Gordon-CenSSIS industrial partner, researched and created a prototype model, which enabled Raytheon (another Gordon-CenSSIS industrial partner) to win an ~$400 million Advanced Spectroscopic Portal (ASP) production contract from DHS. Another example is the multi-sensor suicide bomber detection program, (BomDetec), currently being funded in Phase I by DHS. This effort includes two ALERT partner universities (NU, RPI) and four industry partners (AS&E, Raytheon, Siemens, and PSI) in a proof-of-concept program to demonstrate the effectiveness of combining multi-sensor probes with a human-in-the-loop video tracking system. Other pending university-industry proposals include a passive IR explosive detection system and a proposal in preparation to create a pervasive layered reconnaissance capacity for ports of entry. This seamless teaming with industry is a hallmark of the ALERT program.