Defense technologyPurdue launches Institute for Global Security and Defense Innovation

Purdue University president Mitch Daniels announced last Thursday that the university is opening a new Institute for Global Security and Defense Innovation in Discovery Park.

“We live in a dangerous world in which we must continuously invent more, discover more, and innovate more than those who oppose us, and be able to deliver those technologies quickly into the hands of the people who use them to protect the rest of us,” Daniels said. “Purdue is well-positioned to do this. We are accomplished at not only discoveries in science, engineering and technology, but delivering those discoveries to the market quickly. We think we can do the same for national security and defense.”

Purdue says that as the world deals with changes brought about by emerging technologies such as robotics, rapid manufacturing, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence, and at the same time struggles with cybersecurity and biosecurity, the nation’s defense and security agencies are perhaps moving even faster to understand what these new technologies will mean in the future.

The Purdue institute was announced during a daylong symposium on global defense issues on the Purdue campus. Dan DeLaurentis, Purdue professor of aeronautics and astronautics and President’s Fellow for Defense Initiatives, will be the interim director of the new institute.

The institute will work with Purdue’s other research centers and institutes to research areas such as advanced instrumentation, nanotechnology, social and behavioral sciences, big data analytics, and simulations to deliver integrated systems solutions to the nation’s security and defense community.

Purdue notes that in the 2016 fiscal year, the university was awarded more than $50 million for advanced defense-related research projects. The new institute will centralize defense and security research efforts across campus, and, it is hoped, will make Purdue the pre-eminent university in national defense and security.

“Our nation’s universities and their research capabilities are the envy of the world, and for good reason,” Daniels said. “We should use this competitive advantage, along with government laboratories, private-sector corporations and venture capital firms to ensure continuous technological military superiority.”

DeLaurentis said not all discoveries will be from bench science or engineering – behavioral and social science will be equally important.

“We must develop teams that can understand and then address threats in a manner that integrates technical, social and policy factors,” he said. “These issues must be confronted holistically when we develop pathways to greater security.”

Tomás Díaz de la Rubia, chief scientist and executive director of Purdue’s Discovery Park, said that the United States has gained a technological advantage, or “offset,” in each of the past major conflicts. Nuclear weapons, stealth technologies, global positioning and accuracy are all examples of the ways the U.S. has stayed ahead of its adversaries. But to stay ahead now, the U.S. should be in a state of continuous development, or continuous offset, he said.

“We can no longer rely on decades of military superiority via so-called technology ‘off-sets.’ Countries around the world are innovating and advancing, whether it is quantum computing, cryptography, or hypersonic weapons, or artificial intelligence, the gap is closing fast,” he said. “In the future we must out-invent, out-discover, and out-innovate our adversaries every day.”

More information about the Purdue Institute for Global Security and Defense Innovation can found on the website.