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Chemical / Biological / Radiological / Nuclear / Explosives (CBRNE)

News and Updates

Projects and Programs

DARPA Friend or Foe (FoF) -- Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V)

Ongoing
Vision: Validate new measurement platforms for identifying commensal (friend) and pathogenic (foe) microorganisms Goal: Provide well-characterized, microbial community reference materials of increasing complexity Approach: Start with well-characterized pure cultures and scale up to complex consortia

Vapor Sampling to Support Public Safety and Forensics

Ongoing
Vapor pressures of unstable, reactive compounds. Over the last decade, our group has investigated a variety of low-volatility compounds including taggants (found in explosives), biofuels, terpenes and cannabinoids. Dynamic vapor microextraction (DVME), developed at NIST, is a small-volume dynamic

Thermal Desorption Ambient Mass Spectrometry

Ongoing
The Surface and Trace Chemical Analysis Group is involved in a number of research avenues for the rapid screening of wipe-collected samples for the security and forensic chemistry fields. Similar to the widely-deploy ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) systems for screening, this is accomplished through

Publications

Tools and Instruments

Cabinet x-ray system

The Smiths Detection 6046si cabinet x-ray system was designed for security screening of bags, parcels and other objects of similar size. The system runs at 160

X-ray Backscatter Systems

X-ray backscatter systems are used for the screening of personnel for hidden weapons and other contraband. Unlike conventional radiographic x-ray systems