DHS Awards SENTRY Center of Excellence its First Five-Year BOA, Authorizing up to $4 Million for Homeland Security Research
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) has granted the Soft Target Engineering to Neutralize the Threat Reality (SENTRY) Center of Excellence its inaugural Basic Ordering Agreement (BOA), effective until September 2028. This agreement marks the continuation of SENTRY’s research in support of DHS’ mission to ensure a homeland that is safe, secure, and resilient against terrorism and other potential threats.
This first-time BOA allocates up to $4 million for continued research, analysis, and transition of technology over the next five years. It acknowledges SENTRY’s pivotal role in protecting soft targets and crowded spaces from attack and mitigating casualties.
Established at Northeastern University in 2021, SENTRY aims to create the Virtual Sentry Framework as real-time decision support systems enabling actionable situational awareness leading to more effective threat assessment, preparedness, mitigation, and response for soft targets and crowded places. The framework will require many critical components functioning in tandem to create a successful system. Utilizing existing resources and sourcing data from venues defined as soft targets and crowded places will help to provide rapid threat detection and evidence-based recommendations on the best response for mitigating negative outcomes.
Michael Silevitch, Director of SENTRY, expressed gratitude for the opportunity granted by DHS, “I launched SENTRY with the mission of addressing the need to protect the millions of soft targets and crowded places that exist in our nation and around the world. The BOA enhances the impact of SENTRY through tasks focused on engagement in this mission with industry and other stakeholders.”
This inaugural agreement will support SENTRY’s ongoing research in support of our Virtual Sentry Framework and key focus areas; Real-Time Threat Detection and Mitigation, Advanced Sensing Technologies, Threat Risk Assessment and Deterrence, and Security Architectural Design.