Our Mission

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) created the Illinois Homeland Security Research Center (IHSRC) in January of 2004. The Center functions to:

1. Foster research partnerships between academic institutions throughout the State of Illinois and both private and public partners;
2. Develop synergistic and interdisciplinary abilities to identify and resolve homeland security issues, and set national practices and standards;
3. Conduct research, outreach, and training on terrorism prevention and homeland security; and
4. Provide direct support to the State of Illinois, local communities, and the Federal Department of Homeland Security on technology applications, terrorism prevention and Homeland Security planning, policy, response, and recovery issues.

Our research, outreach and training mission is focused on:

• Defining and addressing critical challenges.
• Supporting first-responders.
• Providing authoritative and unbiased review of emerging technologies.
• Conducting action-oriented, applied research as well as long-term fundamental research to support homeland security and the war on terror.
• Creating and transferring knowledge to other researchers, first responders, and policy makers.
• Transitioning technologies from the laboratory to the private sector.

The Center is creating a usability test bed for concepts and products, providing seed funding for focused research, developing outreach and educational programs, building government and private sector partnerships, and providing a conduit for timely interactions on critical issues.