Long Island vies for Homeland Institute

Long Island Business News, Oct 10, 2003 by Ken Schachter

In a bid to move Long Island to center stage in domestic security, Stony Brook University is jockeying to become the site of the nation's Homeland Security Institute or, alternatively, one of 10 Homeland Security Centers of Excellence.

The initiatives come as the Department of Homeland Security seeks to flesh out the programs outlined in its $29.4 billion budget for fiscal 2004.

Yacov Shamash, Stony Brook vice president for economic development and dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, acknowledged that the proposal for a national Homeland Security Institute was on the school's radar screen as well as the Center of Excellence project.

The Center of Excellence project was included in recommendations flowing out of the Long Island Summit Technology Panel.

Shamash said any efforts to land a homeland security plum would be done in conjunction with industrial partners like Symbol Technologies, Northrop Grumman and EDO Corp. as well as research facilities like Brookhaven National Laboratory.

"We would have to look at our core competencies here ... then we would see what gaps exist," he said. Additional partnerships could be extended to metropolitan-area universities, he added, but "the focus would be for a Long Island center."

The institute is funded along with university programs in a $62 million section of the Department of Homeland Security's budget, while $70 million has been allocated to fund scholarships and up to 10 Centers of Excellence by the end of 2004.

Stony Brook already has a state Center for Advanced Technology in sensors, or Sensor CAT, as well as a Center of Excellence in Wireless and Information Technology, or CEWIT, which has yet to be built, but which already is sponsoring research.

Shamash said the homeland security designation fits well with research into sensors and wireless technology. Also, Long Island's location next to New York City, a prime terror target, lends the research urgency.

"We're close to the city," he said. "My daughter works in the city."

The Centers of Excellence will focus on specific disciplines, according to an outline by the DHS, including "risk-based economic modeling on the impact" of terrorism, behavioral research on terrorism and agro-terrorism countermeasures.

The first Center of Excellence is expected to be chosen by Nov. 25.

The Homeland Security Institute would be a research and development arm for the federal agency, providing scientific and technical analysis.

Albany is adding its weight behind Stony Brook's effort. Fred Di Maggio, director of industry development, homeland security, strategic business division, Empire State Development, said the state is backing efforts to secure contracts related to homeland security and that, to his knowledge, Stony Brook was the state's only applicant.

But Long Island is far from the only region in the starting blocks.

Four Pennsylvania academic centers - the University of Pennsylvania, Penn State University, University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University - reportedly have banded together in an effort snare the Homeland Security Institute.

The latest initiatives follow concerted efforts by a coalition of Long Island defense and technology firms and academic and research institutes united under the "Urban Shield" umbrella to get funding to deploy a wireless network of sensors that would detect chemical biological or nuclear weapons and provide warning and threat assessment to first responders.

C. Kenneth Morrelly, president of the Long Island Forum for Technology, which has been a leader of the Urban Shield effort, said initial contacts already have been made with the Department of Homeland Security about a metropolitan area-bid for a research center.

"It's another piece of the pie," he said.