Kristen Lancaster
DHS Fellow Codes for Truck Safety and Security
DHS Fellow Kristen Lancaster writes code for specialized software that will gather safety information, including details about radioactive materials carried by trucks, at interstate weigh stations. Photo courtesy of the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education.
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At truck weigh stations of the future, specialized computers will not only be able to help check for safety violations like they do today, but they will also be able to detect trucks that are suspected of carrying radioactive materials.
But before that happens, thousands of lines of computer code must be written so that data collected at the weigh stations can be analyzed via specialized computers.
Kristen Lancaster writes code for a special project funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that will make the detection of radiation possible. The DHS Southeastern Transportation Corridor Pilot (SETCP) project focuses on designing and installing specialized monitors for detecting radiation at interstate highway truck weigh stations in the Southeastern U.S.
Lancaster’s participation in the project is a part of her fellowship with the DHS Scholarship and Fellowship Program, which is managed by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education. Funded by the DHS Science and Technology Directorate, the program is designed to tap into the intellectual capital in academia, supporting students interested in contributing to homeland security-related science, technology, engineering and mathematics research and innovation in support of the DHS mission and ensuring the next generation of scientists and engineers dedicated to improving homeland security.
As a DHS Fellow, Lancaster interns at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and spends most of her day writing and debugging code. As a part of the SETCP project, ORNL is collecting data and developing computer user interfaces for the data collection, transfer and storage process.
Lancaster calls herself an “average coder,” but her interests and activities suggests she is anything but. In the summer of 2005, Lancaster interned as a DHS Scholar at Sandia National Laboratory’s Center for Cyber Defenders Program. She also coded in 2006 during a summer job at a major automotive retail software company.
Lancaster volunteers as a firefighter and emergency medical technician in Cedarville, Ohio, where she lives while attending graduate school. She views her time at the computer as time spent potentially helping the first responder community deal with security threats and everyday operations. Oftentimes in security-related research, volunteer firefighters serving rural communities are overlooked in favor of the first responders in large urban population centers, Lancaster says.
“Population centers are more likely targets, but the neighboring rural fire departments will certainly have a hand in any response effort. Additionally, rural departments face hazards – especially of the chemical nature – that equal the threat potential of a terrorist attack.”
Once Lancaster completes her master’s degree in cyber operations at the Air Force Institute of Technology on Wright Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, she hopes to work in research and development for the U.S. Army while her husband pursues his military career.
“While some may see the prospect of being a military wife and moving every two years as career limiting, I am excited to be able to participate on the forefront of technology and global problems and to expand my horizons and capabilities with each job change,” she said.