Pharad and University of Maryland to develop weapon detector
Maryland Industrial Partnerships program pairs Maryland-based companies with faculty to accelerate the commercialization process for promising products; system under development can detect knives, guns, and bombs; $750,000 DHS grant helped kick off R&D
The University of Maryland’s mascot is the terrapin, a fierce looking reptile that inspires the slogan ubiquitous on the College Park campus: Fear the Turtle. Typically the threat is meant only for athletic rivals, but now it has a deeper meaning. As part of the Maryland Industrial Partnerships program — which pairs Maryland-based companies with faculty to accelerate the commercialization process for promising products — the university is teaming up with Glen Burnie, Maryland-based Pharad to help develop a weapons detection system that can identify concealed guns, knives and bombs. Pharad’s system, said company president Austin Farnham, is analogous “to a video camera in the sense that it constantly sees and monitors a scene. It would likely supplement x-ray machines.”
The university is not Pharad’s only partner on the project, which has been in development since 2003. The company also recently received a $750,000 DHS grant from the Department of Homeland Security to develop the detection system — just one of many such programs the department has funded as a way to identify threats at airports and other critical facilities. All told, DHS estimates that the concealed weapons detection equipment market will reach $10 billion by 2010.
-read more in Katie Wilmeth’s Washington Examiner report
