Homeland Security Research Faculty

The following are some of the University of Kentucky faculty involved in homeland security research. For more information on all faculty with sponsored research funding, use SPIFi, UK’s searchable online database of externally funded sponsored projects. SPIFi allows you to search by keywords, PI and Co-PI, and federal, state, non-profit, and industry sponsor, and provides abstracts and email links. SPIFi is maintained by UK’s Office of Sponsored Projects Administration.

Rodney Andrews
Center for Applied Energy Research
(859) 257-0265
andrews@engr.uky.edu

Dr. Andrews works with novel carbon materials, including carbon nanotubes, carbon fibers and graphite foams. He is studying materials that are capable of offering blast protection as well as shielding electromagnetic radiation, important for new, secured site construction and for retrofit of existing structures or buildings. The current program will continue to develop pitch/nanotube-based composites for thermal management and EM shielding applications, as well as develop new nanotube-based structural foams. The materials developed may also find application in thermal management where either conduction or insulation is required.

Sen-Ching “Samson” Cheung
Electrical and Computer Engineering
(859) 257-1257 x80299
sen-ching.cheung@uky.edu

Dr. Cheung’s research is centered on issues associated with video surveillance and protecting the privacy rights of individuals. He is currently working on an indoor video surveillance system that can protect privacy by seamlessly altering the appearance of selected individuals in the video while maintaining system integrity by preserving the original imagery using secure watermarking techniques. He also looks at the public policy aspect of how privacy technologies can be applied and enforced.

W. Porter Dailey
Morgan County Tech Center, West Liberty, Kentucky
(859) 257-3099 x1
porter.dailey@uky.edu

Mr. Dailey provides grant-writing workshops for EMS coordinators applying for homeland security funding. Enrollment is open to all state emergency management coordinators.

Rebecca Dutch
Biochemistry
(859) 323-1795
rdutc2@uky.edu

Dr. Dutch is currently working on the entry of Hendra virus and Nipah virus into cells, a process promoted by viral fusion proteins. Both Hendra and Nipah viruses are included on the Department of Health & Human Services Select Agents list and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Priority Pathogens list. The goals of her research team are to characterize the modifications that occur to these viral fusion proteins and to understand their fusogenic activity, with a long-term goal of developing new antiviral therapies.

Jacqueline Fetherston
Microbiology and Immunology
(859) 323-5638
jdfeth01@uky.edu

Dr. Fetherston is working to identify virulence factors in pneumonic plague.

George Graham
College of Public Health
(859) 257-8202
ggrah2@email.uky.edu

Under a contract with the Department for Public Health Training Branch and Preparedness Branch, Graham is evaluating bioterrorism and all-hazards preparedness of the public health workforce. He oversees both tabletop and field exercises to educate public health workers, and administers a post-exercise competency-based questionnaire to determine the level of preparedness of the respondents. He also recommends changes to the core training curriculum.

Laurence Hassebrook
Electrical and Computer Engineering
(859) 257-8040
lgh@engr.uky.edu
www.engr.uky.edu/~lgh/

Dr. Hassebrook’s research addresses the need for entry and access portals that prevent unauthorized access to important places and systems. He is developing a structured light illumination system that acquires a 3-D surface scan of a human subject’s hand with resolution high enough to record the 3-D shape of each finger’s fingerprint ridges along with the palm print.

Christopher Jaynes
Computer Science
(859) 257-6240
jaynes@cs.uky.edu
Taking Video Surveillance to New Lengths

Dr. Christopher Jaynes is developing video surveillance of the future. With several colleagues in computer science and backed by NSF funding, he is using computer vision, graphics and the power of supercomputing to develop a massive surveillance system in which sensors could track someone’s movement from place to place. “With the wide-view surveillance I’m envisioning, you will be able to match objects as they move from one view to the next. This system would be able to track anomalous behavior exhibited over wide areas.” While his research is still in preliminary stages, he’s already been approached about possible applications for Homeland Security and military reconnaissance. In related research, Jaynes is working in UK’s Center for Visualization & Virtual Environments to develop what he calls the “Metaverse”: computers that are networked together in a room to cover all four walls with projected, seamless images. This technology has potential applications in education, business and medicine, to name a few.

Daniel Lau
Electrical and Computer Engineering
(859) 257-2300 x273
dllau@engr.uky.edu

Dr. Lau’s work addresses the need for technology that can reliably identify specific individuals from the general population by means of biometric identification, such as fingerprint matching and retina scanning. His current focus is on the integration of traditional surveillance video with depth-sensing cameras to extract 3-D facial scans, allowing for scans to be made from distances up to 35 meters. Such a network would directly address issues important to national and homeland security, and would represent the next generation of surveillance cameras that do not just record 2-D video, but also take high-resolution snapshots of the scene preserving both color and 3-D shape.

James Norton
Area Health Education Center
(859) 323-8018
jnorton@email.uky.edu

Dr. Norton is heading up work on Rural Health Bioterrorism and Emergency Preparedness, a collaboration with the University of Louisville. This project will train community-based pharmacists, mental health workers, extension agents, and veterinarians in the preparation for, and active involvement in, response efforts for natural and man-made disasters.

Marcos Oliveira
Pharmaceutical Sciences
(859) 323-2710
moliv2@email.uky.edu

Dr. Oliveira works with Yersinia pestis, a Class A bioterrorism agent that causes plague. The focus of his research is to understand the role of polyamines in growth, virulence and biofilm formation. (A biofilm is a well-organized, cooperating community of microorganisms). His group has recently discovered that polyamines are essential for biofilm formation. This knowledge has led to the identification of potentially novel biodefense therapeutic agents against plague, in the context of a bioterrorism attack. Oliveira’s group is part of the NIH, Southeast Center for Excellence in Biodefense (SERCEB www.serceb.org).

Fred Payne
Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering
(859) 257-3000 x220
fpayne@bae.uky.edu

Dr. Payne is leading a group in the development of a wireless security system to assure the safe delivery of milk, milk samples, and security information from the dairy farm to the dairy plant. The wireless system will be designed to accommodate the future likelihood that dairy herd information must be transported to the dairy plant with the milk, and will also be designed to operate automatically with minimal or no attention required of the truck driver.

Mark Schneider
Kentucky Injury Prevention and Research Center (KIPRC)
(859) 257-5839
mark1@uky.edu

Mark Schneider’s work with KIPRC supports the development of online and CD-based terrorism response and preparedness courses—Introduction to Terrorism Awareness, Bioterrorism Awareness, Chemical Terrorism Awareness, Pediatric Terrorism Awareness, and Agroterrorism (www.kiprc.uky.edu/trap). These courses are certified by the Kentucky Board of Emergency Medical Services. KIPRC, in conjunction with Eastern Kentucky University, has just begun offering these courses in nursing continuing education. These subject areas are geared toward federal, state and local emergency public safety, law enforcement, emergency response, nurses, physicians, emergency medical, and related personnel, agencies and authorities. Also, Mr. Schneider is currently conducting training course evaluations in collaboration with the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security.

Douglas F. Scutchfield
Health Services Management
(859) 257-5678 x82024
scutch@email.uky.edu

Dr. Scutchfield has been involved in an initiative to prepare Kentucky leaders to deal with the challenges facing them in times of crisis and change. His work supports the Healthy People 2010 objectives for workforce development, a comprehensive, nationwide health promotion and disease-prevention agenda launched by the Department of Health and Human Services in 2000. His work also contributes to the overall objective of building a strong infrastructure in Kentucky to respond to both acute and chronic threats to health, with an emphasis on preparedness for bioterrorism acts.

Suzanne Weaver Smith
Mechanical Engineering
(859) 257-6336 x80663
ssmith@engr.uky.edu

The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Research Group at the University of Kentucky is a multidisciplinary collaborative effort involving College of Engineering faculty in several departments. In addition to NASA- and DoD-funded UAV projects, the UK UAV Research Group is developing and evaluating designs to improve the reliability of small UAVs in a wider range of weather conditions to expand the vehicles’ availability for possible homeland security missions such as first-response situational evaluations. Methods for determining system reliability in varying weather conditions are being developed. The UK UAV group is also working under a planning grant to establish a multi-institution, multidisciplinary research center for UAV technology at UK to focus on developing and disseminating UAV technology for national security applications.

Susan Straley
Microbiology and Immunology
(859) 323-6538
scstra01@uky.edu

Dr. Straley is working to identify Yersinia pestis surface proteins that are expressed during pneumonic plague in order to provide the technical base for more detailed screens for new plague vaccine candidates. To provide the foundation for therapies to enhance resistance to plague in humans, she is also looking at how the plague virulence protein YopM undermines host innate defenses early in plague.

Darrell Taulbee
Industrial Support Coordinator
Center for Applied Energy Research
DNTaul1@uky.edu
www.caer.uky.edu

Dr. Taulbee’s work is aimed at reducing the explosion potential of ammonium nitrate (AN), which when mixed with fuel oil can create an explosive with highly destructive power. He proposes to demonstrate a more practical approach for desensitizing agricultural-grade AN with respect to detonation, by coating it with inexpensive waste materials that are readily available throughout the Eastern United States.

Paul Vincelli
Plant Pathology
(859) 257-7445 x80722
pvincell@uky.edu

Dr. Vincelli works in the UK Extension Plant Pathology program, a member of the National Plant Diagnostic Network (Southern Region). This project is part of the USDA’s plans to establish a unified network of public plant diagnostic laboratories that enhance biosecurity of agricultural production and natural ecosystems by quickly detecting introduced pests and pathogens. The UK Plant Diagnostic Laboratories serve as a link in this network in both a diagnostic capacity and to extend and support sound public policies relating to high-risk plant pests and diseases.

Ruigang Yang
Spanning Distances with Tele-Immersion