DHS awards $1.1M for seven federal labs researching technology commercialization

The United States Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) split $1.1 million between seven federal laboratories this week for federal research that could benefit Department of Homeland Security (DHS) missions and homeland security stakeholders – and, potentially, find a market.

The latter is a focus of S&T’s Commercialization Accelerator Program (CAP), from which the inaugural call for technology proposals led to these awards. S&T is an agency under DHS. Its CAP program seeks to identify federally funded technologies that could help a current or imminent need at DHS; increase utilization of federally funded research and development efforts through a mix of partnerships, product development efforts, and commercialization; and improve the capability and efficiency of the federal research organizations’ capabilities to transfer relevant technologies. 

“The Commercialization Accelerator Program bridges the gap between research and the marketplace, accelerating the use and expanding the availability of federally funded technologies,” said Dr. Dimitri Kusnezov, DHS Under Secretary for Science and Technology. “We are proud to leverage innovative research from labs across the federal government to support the DHS mission in addressing critical homeland security challenges.”

In this case, awardees and their affiliated projects included: 

1. Argonne National Laboratory: Autonomous Intelligent Cyber-Defense Agent
2. Idaho National Laboratory, with two earners: Plug-N-Play Appliance for Resilient Response of Operational Technologies and Wireless Radio Frequency Signal Identification & Protocol Reverse Engineering
3. Los Alamos National Laboratory: Industrial Internet of Things – Physics-Informed Artificial Intelligence (AI) Vibe Sensor for Condition Monitoring and Cybersecurity
4. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory: Grid Resilience & Intelligence Platform 2.0
5. Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory: Out of Band Over Existing Industrial Control Communications
6. U.S. Naval Research Laboratory: Portable Electrochemical Sensor & Test Kit for Explosive & Gunshot Residue
7. National Institute of Standards and Technology Information Technology Laboratory: AI Bug Finder

In a statement, DHS noted that award recipients would likely develop technology transfer agreements with private industry over the next 12-24 months. These would allow for new products and services while continuing their R&D, testing, and evaluation projects.