NU inaugurates homeland security ALERT center
Northeastern launched its newly funded Center of Awareness and Localization of Explosives-Related Threats (ALERT), a Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence.
Northeastern University will inaugurate the Center for Awareness and Localization of Explosives-Related Threats (ALERT) on Thursday, October 30, 2008. ALERT, a new research Center of Excellence for Explosives Detection, Mitigation & Response, is funded by the Department of Homeland Security.
(Image: An example of video analysis used to detect anomalous behaviors such as potential suicide bombers and other terrorists)
The ceremony will begin at 10:00 a.m. in the Raytheon Amphitheatre, located in Northeastern’s Egan Research Center, 120 Forsyth Street, Boston. (For a campus map, click on the following link: http://www.northeastern.edu/campusmap/). Northeastern President Joseph E. Aoun will make the opening remarks, followed by Jay M. Cohen, Undersecretary for Science & Technology for the Department of Homeland Security.
State-of-the-art homeland security technologies that are currently being developed by ALERT industrial partners, including Analogic, General Electric, Raytheon, Siemens, American Science & Engineering and Zomega, will be showcased from 10:45 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.
The ALERT inauguration will take place during the annual two-day Research & Industrial Collaboration Conference (RICC), hosted by another Northeastern-led research center, the Bernard M. Gordon Center for Subsurface Sensing and Imaging Systems (Gordon-CenSSIS).
“The ALERT team represents leaders of industry and academia, and I am confident that the research done by ALERT will be translated into highly-effective methods of preventing terrorist attacks,” says Northeastern Professor Michael Silevitch, co-Director of ALERT.