The Department of Homeland Security is harnessing the nation’s scientific knowledge and technological expertise to protect America and our way of life from terrorism. The Department’s Science and Technology directorate, through its Office of University Programs, is furthering this mission by engaging the academic community to create learning and research environments in areas critical to Homeland Security.  

Through the Homeland Security Centers of Excellence program, Homeland Security is investing in university-based partnerships to develop centers of multi-disciplinary research where important fields of inquiry can be analyzed and best practices developed, debated, and shared.  

The Department’s Homeland Security Centers of Excellence (HS-Centers) bring together the nation’s best experts and focus its most talented researchers on a variety of threats that include agricultural, chemical, biological, nuclear and radiological, explosive and cyber terrorism as well as the behavioral aspects of terrorism.  

Current Announcements

• Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) calling for proposals (PDF, 25 pages - 208 KB) that will focus on research efforts for a university-based Center of Excellence in Behavioral and Social Aspects of Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism.  The new Center should focus on both the behavioral and social aspects of the terrorists themselves as well as the behavioral and social effects of terrorist threats and attacks on populations.  The notice invites colleges and universities to submit letters of intent by July 30, 2004, and full proposals are due on September 30, 2004.

• Request for Application.  The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Science to Achieve Results (STAR) Program and the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) University Programs (UP) invite proposals for a research Center of Excellence focused on an area of high priority to both Agencies, Microbial Risk Assessment (MRA) for bio-threat agents. The bio-threat agents of interest include bacteria, viruses, and biotoxins relating to anthrax, smallpox, botulism, plague, viral hemorrhagic fever, and tularemia.

HS-Centers

• Homeland Security selected the University of Southern California (partnering with the University of Wisconsin at Madison, New York University, North Carolina State University, Carnegie Mellon University, Cornell University, and others) to house the first HS-Center, known as the Homeland Security Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events.  The Department is providing the University of Southern California and its partners with $12 million over the course of the next three years for the study of risk analysis related to the economic consequences of terrorist threats and events. Awarded November 2003.
• Texas A&M University and its partners have been awarded $18 million over the course of the next three years for the Homeland Security National Center for Foreign Animal and Zoonotic Disease Defense. Texas A&M University has assembled a team of experts from across the country, which includes partnerships with the University of Texas Medical Branch, University of California at Davis, University of Southern California and University of Maryland.  Texas A&M University’s HS-Center will work closely with partners in academia, industry and government to address potential threats to animal agriculture including foot and mouth disease, Rift Valley fever, Avian influenza and Brucellosis.  Their research on foot and mouth disease will be carried out in close collaboration with Homeland Security’s Plum Island Animal Disease Center.  Awarded April 2004.
• The University of Minnesota and its partners have been awarded $15 million over the course of the next three years for the Homeland Security Center for Food Protection and Defense, which will address agro-security issues related to post-harvest food protection.  The University of Minnesota’s team includes partnerships with major food companies as well as other universities including Michigan State University, University of Wisconsin at Madison, North Dakota State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Rutgers University, Harvard University, University of Tennessee, Cornell University, Purdue University and North Carolina State University.  Awarded April 2004.

What's Next?

Future Homeland Security Centers of Excellence include the study of the behavioral and sociological aspects of terrorism, and a Homeland Security Cooperative Center of Excellence created by Homeland Security and the Environmental Protection Agency on microbial risk assessment.