The Coast Guard has extended the comment period for the Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) Reader Notice of Proposed Rulemaking by 30 days until June 20 at the behest of Reps. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) who wanted the service to hold more public meetings around the country to hear from more stakeholders. So far the Coast Guard has held three public meetings with a fourth and final meeting scheduled for May 9 in Chicago. The rule tells regulated seaport facilities and vessels what they need to do in terms of implementing electronic card readers for port workers seeking access to secure areas of ports with their TWIC credentials.
Stanford Univ. has received a potential $900,912 contact from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under the Methods for Explosive Detection at Standoff (MEDS) program. Stanford joins Northeastern Univ., the Univ. of Arizona, BAE Systems and Quasar Federal Systems as an awardee under MEDS, which is aimed at rapidly developing and demonstrating non-contact methods to detect explosives embedded or packaged in opaque media with high water content. Stanford’s contact has a $714,234 base value and an $186,678 option.
Energy Research Co. has received a one-year, $745,762 contract from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency to develop and test two prototype systems using orthogonal laser-based explosive sensing technology to detect explosive residue on the exteriors of suspected IEDs, vehicle borne IEDs, and other structures. Both sensors will use Laser Induced Acoustics technology.
Implant Sciences [IMSC] has added Dr. Quan Shi as senior analytical chemist to its technology team. Shi was most recently Lead R&D Scientist at ThermoFisher Scientific [TMO] where he was responsible for new product development and government certification for explosives detectors. He has experience in explosives, drug and other trace chemical detection, gas chromatography, differential ion mobility spectrometry, and mass spectrometry.