The Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate has awarded two contracts worth a combined $4.4 million related to biological threat detection technology. S&T awarded ENSCO, Inc. an 18-month, $2.9 million contract for continued work on SenseNet, which is aimed at developing a low-cost integrated sensor system that can detect biological health hazards in buildings and other high-occupancy indoor facilities and distinguish between naturally occurring events and threats. Previously, ENSCO designed and demonstrated a prototype system that can be adapted to various building layouts. Under the new effort, the company will build an architecture that integrates multiple sensor types that are potentially highly distributed and will generate data that can be collected and analyzed in the cloud for rapid situational awareness and response.
…Zeteo Tech Award.
Under a $1.5 million contract, Zeteo Tech will develop and test a new sensor technology prototype combining trigger and detector functions to enable real-time detection of aerosolized biological threat agents, including bacteria, viruses and toxins. The trigger technology will sort individual airborne biological agents by size and shape and send them into the detector one particle at time to sensure a clean “molecular fingerprint” is generated. The detector will use matric-assisted laser desorptive ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) technology to generate molecular fingerprints that are unique to each particle.
The FBI plans to award a contract to Life Technologies, which is part of Thermo Fisher Scientific, for two RapidHIT ID DNA systems for testing by the bureau’s Laboratory Division. The FBI says it needs to evaluate new enhancements to the technology, which were made by Life Technologies after it acquired IntegenX, the original maker of the RapidHIT systems. The evaluations are necessary prior to use of the systems for case working and databasing operations.
Ardent Management Consultants has received a potential nine-month extension to its existing contract to continue providing support to the Department of Homeland Security under the Geospatial Concept of Operations (GeoCONOPS), which provides the department and other federal, state and local agencies geospatial data that is used to support ongoing national special security events, incidents and reporting. A new contract is being recompeted under the multiple-award GTSS 2.0, which will be established this June or July. The value of Ardent’s extension was redacted.