Research to help U.S. military with bomb detection

Few outside of the IU Department of Chemistry know the government has contracted the University to develop technologies that could reliably detect roadside explosives and airborne biological threats.\nAnd that's the way David Clemmer, a chemistry professor and the project's scientific coordinator, likes it.\n"We don't like the publicity," he said as he descended the stairs into the chemistry building's basement laboratory. He said he thinks that if the project were more widely known, people could misunderstand its goals, and the researchers could be put under unnecessary scrutiny.\nClemmer said he is currently the only researcher at IU working on the $1.17 million project but said he will soon hire about five others to assist in the research, which is called Next Generation Threat Detection. The research ultimately aims to develop instruments that will detect threats in places such as airports. \nClemmer said his team would likely develop technology similar to the devices airport security employees have used for years to screen passengers for potential explosives. \nClemmer said one of the main goals of the project is to make the instrumentation more "robust" so it could withstand daily use and be more user-friendly.\n"One of the things we would like to achieve early on is reducing the number of false positives and increasing the (instrument's) sensitivity," Clemmer said. "We don't want people running for cover because of a false alarm."\nThe project is in collaboration with Purdue and the University of Illinois, while Crane Naval Surface Warfare Center, located about 40 miles southwest of Bloomington, will act as an administrator, overseeing the research and ensuring the team follows government protocol, said John Dement, the project's technology engagement officer at Crane.\n"The Midwest is a great place for analytical chemistry," Clemmer said, explaining why the government chose Big Ten universities to pursue the new technologies. \nThe threat detection research is just a sliver of the relationship Crane has developed with IU in recent years. The program is one of two major research projects taking shape with the naval base as a part of the 2007 Department of Defense appropriations.\nThe other is with the IU Cyclotron Facility, which has also been contracted by Crane to develop a free-electron laser. The facility's director, Paul Sokol, said the laser could be used to develop measures that could protect instrumentation aboard naval ships and in aircraft from the harmful effects of radiation.\nEven with the ambitious goals, Clemmer acknowledged a long road awaits him, saying it is still too early to ascertain exactly what his project could produce. He said developing instruments to detect explosives is relatively easy, but creating devices sensitive enough to detect a roadside threat is an entirely different hurdle.\n"The idea is that you have these things on the side of the vehicle that can run up and sniff (a potential explosive) before you get close enough that they can hurt you," Clemmer said. "And that is a very challenging thing."\nBoth Clemmer and Dement said even if all of the research goes according to plan, an actual device is about three years away -- if it's ever designed.\n"A lot of people assume because the money is there, the technology will hit the market," Dement said. "But there is a huge difference between what we are able to prove in the lab and what will actually work in the field."\nClemmer agreed about the challenges and said although he never envisioned working on this type of project, he said he thinks it is his duty to use this opportunity to develop potentially life-saving technology.\n"Nothing would make me happier than if we could develop a device that was being used over in Iraq tomorrow," he said. "But we're still a generation from there"