DHS awards $1.1M to federal labs in contracts seeking ‘groundbreaking’ tech

The Department of Homeland Security’s Science & Technology directorate issued $1.1 million in awards to seven federal laboratories Tuesday in an effort to better identify groundbreaking technologies with the potential to be commercialized.

The funding will flow through S&T’s Commercial Accelerator Program, or CAP, which seeks to bridge “the gap between federal scientific research and the marketplace” through a “process specifically designed to accelerate technology maturity and create partnerships with private industry.”

“We are proud to leverage innovative research from labs across the federal government to support the DHS mission in addressing critical homeland security challenges,” said Dimitri Kusnezov, DHS under secretary for science and technology, in a statement.

Five of the awards were given to labs under the authority of the Energy Department: Argonne National Laboratory, for its Autonomous Intelligent Cyber-Defense Agent; Idaho National Laboratory for its Plug-N-Play Appliance for Resilient Response of Operational Technologies and its Wireless Radio Frequency Signal Identification & Protocol Reverse Engineering; Los Alamos National Laboratory for its Industrial Internet of Things—Physics-Informed AI Vibe Sensor for Condition Monitoring and Cybersecurity, and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory for its Grid Resilience & Intelligence Platform 2.0.

In addition, the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory received an award for its Out of Band Over Existing Industrial Control Communications project. The Defense Department’s U.S. Naval Research Laboratory received an award for its Portable Electrochemical Sensor & Test Kit for Explosive & Gunshot Residue project. Finally, the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Information Technology Lab received an award for its Artificial Intelligence Bug Funding project.