Workshops & Conferences

Collaborative Events to Foster New Technology

Workshops are a key element of SENTRY’s engagement with the broad security community. We host several workshops and conferences each year, bringing together academics, industry, government, and security stakeholders to discuss the security of soft targets and crowded spaces. Our events are intended to provide a collaborative environment in which to network, share research, and listen to the needs of security stakeholders and DHS components.

SENTRY Strategic Initiatives Virtual Workshop Series

SENTRY's Strategic Initiatives Virtual Workshop series presents discussions on best practices, current efforts, and future possibilities to secure and protect soft targets and crowded places in the United States. The workshop engages speakers from academia, government, industry and public venue spaces to review successes, current research and threats to public gatherings. The theme of the inaugural workshop was Protecting Mass Gatherings in the U.S.

Strategic Initiatives Virtual Workshop

Advanced Development for Security Applications Workshop Series

Originally developed by the emeritus ALERT DHS Center of Excellence, the Advanced Development for Security Applications (ADSA) workshop series is now focused on SENTRY research areas. Attendees include academia, security vendors and professionals, government agencies, and federally funded research and development centers.

ADSA workshops address the problems that need to be solved to protect soft targets and crowded spaces. We seek perspectives from attendees to better understand how to increase access to resources, information, and funding to allow more participation in creating actionable solutions. Our goal is to reduce the barriers to entry for students, industry, and academics alike to create a collaborative force driven to solve the challenge of better protecting these venues.

Reconnect Workshop Series

Reconnect Workshops are a vehicle to foster the broad participation of underrepresented groups at Community Colleges and minority-serving institutions in the SENTRY effort to protect soft targets and crowded places. Reconnect workshops expose faculty teaching undergraduates to current applications of mathematical and computational sciences and provide an opportunity for government or industry professionals to learn about recent research in related areas. The featured topic changes each year and is presented over the course of 4.5 days in a series of lectures and activities. Participants will be involved in activities that they and their students can continue to use and explore after the workshop. They will create modules that can be used in their classrooms and others around the country.

Reconnect Workshops

Case Study Listening Sessions and Ideation Events

To better understand the specific needs of various soft targets and crowded spaces, SENTRY has developed SENTRY Case Studies. Each case study begins with a panel of venue-specific security stakeholders participating in a moderated listening session. The listening session facilitates an open discussion between SENTRY researchers and security stakeholders to gain a preliminary understanding of the security landscape, needs, and priorities relevant to that case study. The information gathered during the listening session lays the foundation for a focused ideation event to generate concepts and ideas of how to structure a Virtual Sentry Framework in the space. This is a larger event that gathers a more diverse representation of security stakeholders within the case study area of focus.

Case Studies

Industry Advisory Board Meetings

To facilitate the transition of research into technology that can be used by DHS and other stakeholders who help protect soft targets and crowded places SENTRY has established an Industry Advisory Board. Held yearly, these meetings focus on awareness of the SENTRY mission and provide a networking opportunity for faculty researchers, Industry and Government Partners to develop relationships that will facilitate technology transfer and other collaborative efforts. The meeting agenda may include guest lecturers, in-depth faculty presentations, Industry Partner presentations, tours of testbeds, and a student/faculty research poster session.

Industry Partnerships