CMU Auton Lab publicly recognized by a Department of Homeland Security official

[Artur Dubrawski]

Team,

I was surprised but very pleased to hear one of our projects showcased 
as the sole template of
a success story in a plenary talk by Dr. Joel Rynes, Assistant Director 
for R&D at the U.S. Department
of Homeland Security, at the DNDO ARI conference earlier this week.

This was completely unexpected, because the government officials at this 
level of responsibility
typically refrain from mentioning any vendor or partner names explicitly 
in their public appearances.
In the past, we had prepared numerous batches of presentation and 
press-releasable materials for
the use by our government sponsors, from which we had to remove any and 
all references to CMU,
the Robotics Institute, or the Auton Lab.

Dr. Rynes basically said that everyone in the R&D community working in 
the space of radiation safety
should look at how our CMU team has developed the foundations of ERNIE 
system and how the results of
our research are being successfully transitioned to the U.S. Customs 
practice, and how significant difference
it will make when the system is fully deployed throughout the organization.

Hats go down above all to Saswati who continues to deliver exceptional 
implementations of our
algorithms and who makes our partners from Lawrence Livermore National 
Laboratory and various
groups of our sponsors and end-users very pleased with them.

Cheers!
Artur

PS ERNIE stands for " Enhanced Radiological Nuclear Inspection and 
Evaluation".
This is the project in which we look at the data collected using 
Radiation Portal Monitors
at the U.S. ports of entry, and the primary objective is to combine 
physics of radiation models
and machine learning to allow dismissing a large number of alerts that 
are generated
by non-threatening sources of radiation, while never missing a real threat.
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