The U.S. Department of Homeland Security handed a mechanical engineering professor and others in his department nearly $2 million on Tuesday to advance a computer model used at a national laboratory to detect nuclear smuggling in foreign nations.
David Morton received the funds to expand and improve the design of a network of sensors made to detect smuggling in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union that have insufficient security for their stores of nuclear weapons and radioactive material.
Morton and petroleum engineering graduate student Feng Pan designed the original computer model in 2003, Morton said.
The computer model has already helped guide national decisions about placement of devices to detect nuclear smuggling attempts in the last four years, he said.
With the recent funding, the mechanical engineering faculty at UT will spend five years expanding Morton's computer model, which, he said, examines smuggling scenarios: the behaviors, paths and actions of smugglers.
Morton said he does not receive the actual data that is received from this computer model at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, which is operated by the U.S. Department of Energy.
"They don't tell us everything," he said. "We build the computer model, and they populate it."
Mechanical engineering assistant professor Erich Schneider will work on the probability of the detector, working to catch smugglers and build the computer model's description of the nuclear material, Morton said.
Mechanical engineering assistant professor Elmira Popova said she will provide probability calculations and computer
simulations.
"Los Alamos has the system up and running, and if we use new modules that work, we can use them right away," Morton said. "We think we have a chance to affect what is done and practiced."
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