Thread: AZ: UA will help lead U.S. border studies

UA will help lead U.S. border studies
It's picked to join feds' Centers of Excellence effort
By Eric Swedlund
arizona daily star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 02.27.2008

The University of Arizona will lead one of five new Department of Homeland Security Centers of Excellence, with a $15 million grant over six years to study border security and immigration.
The UA will direct the research arm of the Center of Excellence for Border Security and Immigration, while its co-leader, the University of Texas at El Paso, will direct the center's educational functions. The center will draw together 10 other research universities — including Arizona State University — for a broad portfolio of multidisciplinary research and development work on new technologies and tools to balance immigration and commerce with effective border security.
"This is going to put border security and immigration as another point of excellence for us," said Leslie Tolbert, the UA vice president for research, graduate studies and economic development. "It's building on great strengths here. If you look at the list of expertise at the University of Arizona, the people who are doing this work in many cases have been doing it for some time. But now we're going to have all these people working together regularly."
The UA was a clear go-to university for border-security research from the start of the process, said Tiffany Lightbourn, program manager for the centers under Homeland Security's Office of University Programs.
"They have a very strong management team with a lot of experience leading multi-institutional projects," Lightbourn said. "They've been a real hub for people interested in border security and research."
Lightbourn said the UA's project leader, Jay Nunamaker, has been a "central figure in making sure academic institutions remain a part of the research debate" in border security.
The UA was selected for its expertise in a broad range of areas, including work in sensor innovations, unmanned aerial vehicles, and border and immigration policy and law.
"We're hoping for tools that will enhance our ability to surveil, screen and have better situational awareness over the border environment," Lightbourn said. "We're hoping they can help us with a better understanding of some of our immigration policy issues, help us understand the perspectives of our neighbors to our north and south, and give us a better sense of who are crossing our borders — and what, when and where."
The center's focus will be to "assess threats and vulnerabilities, improve surveillance and screening, analyze immigration trends, and help to enhance policy and law enforcement efforts," said the Homeland Security announcement.
The other four centers of excellence announced Tuesday by the undersecretary for science and technology are: Explosives Detection, Mitigation and Response; Maritime, Island and Port Security; Natural Disasters, Coast Infrastructure and Emergency Management; and Transportation Security. They will be led by nine other universities.
The centers will be evaluated every two years, and there is opportunity for funding renewal at the end of six years, Lightbourn said. The directors will gather twice a year, and the Department of Homeland Security will hold integrative workshops throughout the year.
"There are definite spaces where the centers will have natural collaborations," Lightbourn said.
Current border-related research at the UA includes new methods in detecting deception in communications; the Dark Web project, which analyzes links in extremist communication online; sensor innovations in optical sciences; and new platforms for deploying sensors. Policy and legal experts will participate from the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy and the Center for Latin American Studies.
Further out, research will focus on new technologies for surveillance, screening, unmanned aerial vehicles, communication analysis and data fusion from multiple sensors. Policy research will cover population dynamics; immigration enforcement; civic integration and citizenship; border risk management; and international governance.
The other partner universities for the center are New Mexico State University, the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, San Diego State University, the University of Texas — Pan American, the University of Minnesota, the University of Washington, West Virginia University, the University of Southern California and the University of Albany.
Other partners include other national labs and federal agencies, private-industry members, Southern Arizona law enforcement agencies, and Mexican and Canadian institutions.

http://www.azstarnet.com/dailystar/227106

Kind of like letting the Fox watch the chickens while you run to the store isnt it?
The ones INVOLVED in this will come to the conclusion that ALL is OK in America...And having Canada and Mexico in on it????
How many of those Taxpayer MILLIONS went to them?
I went to the NSF website and looked up on that "Dark Web Project", and was curious about something I read, I will add it & YOU can do the math...

Dark Web's capabilities are also being used to study the online presence of extremist groups and other social movement organizations. Chen sees applications for this Web mining approach for other academic fields.

"What we are doing is using this to study societal change," Chen says. "Evidence of this change is appearing online, and computational science can help other disciplines better understand this change."

Please tell me WHO decides which websites are "Dangerous"?
And WHY would they mention this Project in this article? Considering it has to do with Border Security.
Just curious I guess, dont think paranoia is an issue yet lol

Buy a case of beer and sit down with the people who work on the border.
I bet they would save a whole lot of money and come up with some real answers.

UA fits border project
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 02.28.2008

The Department of Homeland Security made a good choice by selecting the University of Arizona to lead one of the department's five new Centers of Excellence. The UA is a natural fit for such a project because it is close to the border and situated in an area that sees a disproportionate amount of smuggling traffic.
We are hopeful that UA researchers' intimate knowledge of border issues will help shape more effective border policies for the nation.
The UA will direct the research arm of the Center of Excellence for Border Security and Immigration, the Star's Eric Swedlund reported Wednesday. The UA will co-lead the center with the University of Texas at El Paso.
The UA will also work with Arizona State University and a handful of other institutions to research and develop new technologies and tools to balance immigration and commerce with effective border security.
The UA will receive a $15 million grant over six years to carry out the project, Swedlund reported.
The UA had to compete for the project, which had the support of U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva and five other members of Arizona's congressional delegation.
"I commend the UA for their leadership on a comprehensive approach to border security," Grijalva said in a press release Tuesday. "Our border policy towards the U.S.-Mexico border is a constant challenge, and I am looking forward to the UA's efforts in helping to craft realistic and humane border policies."
Homeland Security officials could not have picked a more fitting university to tackle the challenges of immigration and border security. The U.S. Border Patrol's Tucson Sector is ground zero in the United States for the smuggling of illegal drugs and illegal entrants.
Border Patrol spokesman Jesus Rodriguez said Wednesday that the Tucson Sector accounts for more than 45 percent of the national total in both illegal-border-crossing arrests and marijauna seizures.
The UA was selected for its expertise in a range of areas, including sensor innovations, unmanned aerial vehicles and border and immigration policy and law, Swedlund reported.
We congratulate the UA on becoming one of Homeland Security's centers of excellence and hope the school's researchers can help the nation find solutions — which have proved elusive — to the problems associated with illegal immigration.

http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/227224