Finalists chosen for National Security Innovation Competition

The National Homeland Defense Foundation has announced 10 finalists for the National Security Innovation Competition.

In its fifth year, the security competition will be held at the U.S. Air Force Academy on April 29.

The competition was designed to stimulate student interest in national security problem-solving by exposing university-sponsored projects to a broad audience.

Universities and projects competing in the final round include:

• The Air Force Institute of Technology, “Enhancing Neutron Detection Capabilities with Solid
State Devices”
• North Carolina State University, “Construction and Validation of Access Control Policies via
Natural Language Processing and Policy Verification”
• University of New Mexico, “A Field Desorption Ion Source Based Neutron Generator for Active
Interrogation Systems”
• University of Notre Dame, “Dilation Aware Multi-Image Enrollment for Iris Biometrics”
• University of Ottawa, “Innovative and Cost Effective Blast Strengthening of Wood Framed
Structures”
• University of San Diego, “Image Correlation Based Video Tracking”
• University of Utah has two finalist projects: 1) “Low–Cost, Portable Detection of Peroxide-Based
Improvised Explosive Devices”; and 2) “Spatial-Information Approach to Analyzing and Planning
Distributed Transportation Security Systems”
• The United States Air Force Academy, “Cool Clean Technologies”
• Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, “Dynamic Obscuration of IPv6 Addressees to
Achieve a Moving Target Defense”

Twenty-five projects entered the competition, which was judged by 41 scientists and technologists in the defense industry and government agencies.

Projects were judged on uniqueness; relevancy to meet a national and homeland security need; how student teams described the process to transfer their project to commercial use; and the overall clarity and quality of  written reports.

During the competition, finalists will make an oral presentation to a panel of national-level judges.

The top prizes will be $10,000 for first place, $5,000 for second place and $2,500 for
third place.

Sean Roche, director for the Office of Science & Technology, CIA, will be keynote speaker at the luncheon.

Comments are closed.