Cochise County anticipates more advanced border security from the University of Arizona’s new six-year program that will focus on border science and technology.

The UA beat out more than one hundred different teams from various universities that competed to host the program.

The National Center for Border Security and Immigration will receive about $16 million over the next six years from government funding.

The University of Texas in El Paso will lead the educational portion of the program while the UA will focus on research and technological advancements of border security.

“We’re trying to find ways to balance the demand for increased security at the border,” said Elyse Golob, director of the Office of Economic and Policy Analysis at the UA and executive director for the program. “We have an expectation that it will help border agents do their jobs better as well as helping the program with giving information as to what is working and what isn’t.”

Jay Nunamaker Jr., director for the Center for Management of Information, will also be leading the research for the National Center for Border Security.

“We will be working quite a bit with the Department of Homeland Security and the Border patrol, Nunamaker said, “We will work in the lab developing technology and then we will take it to the field and test it with them. That is another plus for this, it gives us an open door to work with organizations we never would have before.”

Golob said some of the projects that they will integrate into the program will focus on detection, sensor networks, data fusion, risk management, current and potential environmental risks and strong social science projects to see how it impacts the criminal justice system.

“The work to be completed is divided into two projects on the technology side. Project 1 will involve the development of better technologies for assessing lies. Project 2 deals with the many sensors they have on the border, ground, UAV [unmanned ariel vehicle] fixed position. How do you make sense of all these sensors? We need to make them work together better,” said Nunamaker.

One project that will be a main focus in the program is Raytheon’s scorpion vehicle, which the UA helped develop. The Scorpion is a robotic vehicle designed to drive itself that will be primarily used to search for illegal immigrants around the border. It will be equipped with radar sensors that can help detect human life-forms in the middle of the desert, according to the Scorpion vehicle website.

Another border technology work in progress involves lie detection.

“We have a machine we call a Laser Doppler Vibrometer. It checks the blood pressure and pulse at a distance. Right now we are refining the software. It works well at 10 feet but they want it to work at 100 feet. It puts a red beam on the corroted artery and measures the vibrations of the blood flow,” said Nunamaker.

They are also working on making the beam invisible. However, if someone is wearing a turtle-neck or has a beard, they are unable to get a good reading from the detector.

“The light down at the border is also different than the light in the lab. We have to test all the variables,” said Nunamaker.

The program will also serve as a platform for students to get involved in helping develop the technology and research.

“Students will be integral to the center,” Nunamaker added. “We will employ lots of masters and undergraduate students to work in various operations of the center,” said Nunamaker.
Golob said that the program is meant to focus on increasing border security and law enforcement while keeping up trades with Mexico.

“As well as focusing on border security, we also believe that this entire program will help create jobs while helping with future security,” Golob said.