U.S., Russian scientists to collaborate on anti-terrorism research
The United States has awarded the first in a series of grants to teams of U.S. and former Soviet scientists to collaborate on innovative ways to help reduce the impact of international terrorist threats, officials announced Wednesday. The awards aim to achieve the dual goals of improving homeland security as well as preventing the proliferation of critical weapons expertise.
The Civilian Research and Development Foundation, using funds provided by the State Department, will award up to $100,000 through the end of this year to six teams made up of U.S., Russian, Ukrainian, and Georgian scientists. They were chosen to conduct research projects ranging from developing radiation and explosive detection and decontamination technologies to identifying protective measures for civilian infrastructure such as utilities, buildings and subways, foundation officials told reporters.
Team members in Russia, Ukraine and Georgia will receive 80 percent of the funds, while their U.S. partners will receive 20 percent, according to David Lindeman, the CRDF program director.
The awards are the first in series of anti-terrorism grants the foundation plans to award in the coming months from among 140 joint proposals it has received from U.S. and former Soviet scientists. A total of $1 million has been set aside for the anti-terrorism grants, while additional funding is being sought from U.S. government and private sources.
Lindeman said other foundation grants to help create alternative work for former Soviet scientists usually last several years and said the accelerated pace of the projects is indicative of the urgency to find novel defenses against the threats of terrorism to civilian populations.
Five of the six teams selected will draw on the expertise of former Soviet scientists steeped in the design, development or production of weapons of mass destruction technologies. Many of the pending grant proposals come from former Soviet scientists with backgrounds in developing weapons of mass destruction, officials added.
Cindi Mentz, the foundation's director of nonproliferation programs, said today's awards effectively kill address two challenges at once: they advance U.S. homeland security objectives while at the same time making a significant contribution to U.S. efforts to prevent the leakage of weapons scientists and expertise from Russia and other former Soviet countries to rogue states or terrorist groups.
The grants will spur research into a variety of areas. For example, the National Institute of Standards and Technology will team up with former nuclear and missile scientists at the Institute of Semiconductor Physics at the Ukrainian Academy of Science to develop small dosimeters that can be installed in personal items such as jewelry or credit cards to help medical diagnostics in the event of a radiation emergency.
Pennsylvania State University will be represented on two of the selected teams. On one project it will collaborate with former missile scientists from the Dnepropetrovsk State Technical University of Railway Transport in Ukraine to develop recommendations for beefing up civilian infrastructure against terrorist threats. In another project it will team with former nuclear scientists from the Institute of Mining Mechanics in Tbilisi, Georgia, on development of a system of protective measures such as special sprinklers and emergency alarms in the event of unpredicted explosions in buildings.
Another grant will bring together Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and former nuclear weapons and missile scientists at the Institute of Single Crystals in Kharkiv, Ukraine, to develop a new spectrometer for detecting explosives in baggage and shipping containers.
Two other projects involve a University of Texas-Russian Academy of Sciences effort to test new types of blast-resistant cement and a University of Minnesota-Russian Center for Thermophysical Researches proposal to improve the quality of cadmium zinc telluride crystals for detecting nuclear materials.
The foundation, authorized by Congress and established by the National Science Foundation in 1995, supports scientific and technical collaboration between the United States and the former Soviet Union. It has an average annual budget between $20 million and $25 million, funded primarily by the State Department, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and the private MacArthur Foundation and Carnegie Corporation of New York.