LIVERMORE, Calif. — Every day at ports of entry, hundreds of thousands of vehicles and containers cross into the country. Since 9/11, all incoming vehicles and containers at land crossings, rail crossings, mail facilities and shipping terminals are scanned by Customs and Border Protection officers to detect potential threats, including radiation. It is now time to […]
Tag Archives: Homeland security
Sandia Labs names new leader for California site
September 4, 2019 – 10:00 am
LIVERMORE, Calif. — Sandia National Laboratories has appointed Andrew McIlroy the new associate laboratories director responsible for managing and leading Sandia’s California site in Livermore, effective immediately. McIlroy succeeds D.E. “Dori” Ellis, who was named deputy laboratories director at Sandia in late June. He has been leading the California site on an interim basis since […]
Longtime Sandia leader named second-in-charge of national security lab
June 5, 2019 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. —The board of managers of the contractor that manages and operates Sandia National Laboratories, has named labs veteran D.E. “Dori” Ellis as deputy director of the country’s largest national laboratory effective June 28. The National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia LLC Board of Managers named Ellis to succeed David Douglass, who is […]
Sandia’s international peer mentorship program improves biorisk management
October 24, 2017 – 1:04 pm
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The world is becoming increasingly interconnected. While this has definite advantages, it also makes it easier to spread disease. Many diseases don’t produce symptoms for days or weeks, far longer than international flight times. For example, Ebola has an incubation period of two to 21 days. Improving biosafety practices around the world […]
Cleaning concrete contaminated with chemicals
September 19, 2016 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – In March 1995, members of a Japanese cult released the deadly nerve agent sarin into the Tokyo subway system, killing a dozen people and injuring a thousand more. This leads to the question: What if a U.S. transportation hub was contaminated with a chemical agent? The hub might be shut down for […]
When hurricanes take aim officials can get Sandia’s guidance
September 13, 2016 – 1:00 pm
LIVERMORE, Calif. – When a hurricane approaches landfall, local, state and tribal governments must work together to decide whether and how they should evacuate large populations to save lives. Emergency managers must make quick decisions, often with outdated information and computer models. To ensure that emergency officials are better prepared to respond efficiently, researchers at […]
X-ray vision: Bomb techs strengthen their hand with Sandia’s XTK software
September 6, 2016 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — In the chaos that followed the terrorist attack at the 2013 Boston Marathon, bomb squads scanned packages at the scene for explosive devices. Two homemade pressure cooker bombs had killed three people and injured more than 250, and techs quickly had to determine if more were waiting to blow up. They got […]
Suicide bomb detector moves forward with Sandia engineer’s help
February 18, 2016 – 10:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — On the chilling list of terrorist tactics, suicide bombing is at the top. Between 1981 and 2015, an estimated 5,000 such attacks occurred in more than 40 countries, killing about 50,000 people. The global rate grew from three a year in the 1980s to one a month in the 1990s to one […]
Sandia tamper-detecting seal is tough to fool
July 7, 2015 – 7:20 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A critical area of security is ensuring that something inside a container stays there. Sandia National Laboratories has made the job easier with an innovative technology that detects signs of tampering. “In our world, one advance by an adversary can make a security technology obsolete overnight,” said Dianna Blair, manager of Sandia’s […]
Asian American engineering honorees credit families for success
February 19, 2015 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Two scientists at Sandia National Laboratories thought back to their roots when they won Asian American Engineer of the Year (AAEOY) awards: Somuri Prasad to a village in India and Patrick Feng to a refuge in America. Prasad’s father helped found the first school in his native Pasumarru in the Krishna District […]
Airport security officers at TSA gaining insight from Sandia human behavior studies
April 21, 2014 – 5:00 am
LIVERMORE, Calif.— A recent Sandia National Laboratories study offers insight into how a federal transportation security officer’s thought process can influence decisions made during airport baggage screening, findings that are helping the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) improve the performance of its security officers. The TSA-funded project, led by Sandia researchers Ann Speed and Kiran Lakkaraju, […]
Cargo security partnership takes home national tech transfer award
March 10, 2014 – 11:50 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories and two collaborators won the national Federal Laboratory Consortium’s 2014 Interagency Partnership Award. The award recognizes agency and/or laboratory employees from at least two organizations who together did outstanding work in transferring technology. The winning partnership included Sandia, the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) Systems Center Pacific […]
Threat reduction: Hruby leads Sandia effort to counter weapons of mass destruction
February 14, 2014 – 11:00 am
Sandia Labs vice president to speak at AAAS annual meeting CHICAGO, Ill. — Threats of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction don’t seem as imminent today as they did after terrorists flew hijacked planes into the first World Trade Center and the Pentagon and crashed in a Pennsylvania field, but scientists, industry and universities working on technological […]
Sandia Labs wins five regional FLC tech transfer awards
October 24, 2013 – 11:15 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories won five regional awards from the Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) for its work to develop and commercialize innovative technologies. The FLC’s Far West/Mid-Continent regions gave Outstanding and Notable Technology Development awards to Sandia’s: SpinDx medical diagnostic tool; Sandia Cooler, which reduces energy to cool computer processor chips; and Self-Assembled […]
Sandia internship program serves up challenging national security work with a side of fun
October 17, 2013 – 10:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Keilan Jackson wanted real-world experience when he shopped for an internship for the summer of 2013. The Arizona State University computer science junior had completed other intern stints where his work was never put to use. From several options, he chose Sandia National Laboratories’ Technical Internships to Advance National Security, or TITANS, […]