General Information

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Project Description

This summer, I would be working on examining the effectiveness of Walk Through Metal Detectors in large stadium venues by designing experiments to understand their vulnerabilities.

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Week 1:

This week, I reviewed several literature pertaining to Walk Through Metal Detectors(WTMD) to get some background information on the what they were and how they were used. On familiarizing myself with WTMDs, I began putting together objectives that I hoped to accomplish by the end of the research and in doing so, I prepared my first presentation to serve as an introduction to my proposed research. I also attended CCICADA meetings as well as HTML and laTex workshops, to get a hands-on lesson on using these programming languages.

Week 2:

This week, I began looking up various several lists of various contraband items, focusing mainly on weapons. I was also assigned a task to find information on several contraband items that people often deliberately want to sneak in and how they eventually attempt to. All of these was done in preparation for our first trip to the Metlife stadium, where we would observe a real life situation on the use of WTMDs during an actual event.

Week 3:

This week, we began performing hand on experiments with the walk through metal detectors, recording on observations on the effects of certain key factors on the alarm rate of the machine. We also had our first live observation of the application of WTMDs at a large stadium venue during an event. Here we recorded useful information while observing in order to assist us in our desired goal for the summer.

Week 4:

This week was a continuation to work that was done in week 3. We identified key factors and also tested with the WTMDs the effect these factors have on the alarm rate of the machine. We also began writing summary reports on each of the literature we had read earlier on and also on our visit to the stadium.

Week 5:

This week, we brainstormed more key factors that could affect the performance of WTMDs. This lead us to more experimental testing, tin order to observe the impact the proposed factor has on the WTMD.

Week 6:

This week, in preparation for the final presentation, we began making outlines and drafts of the presentation, while also thinking of more factors that we can test. We also took a field trip to IBM, where we had a great opportunity to learn a plethora of things not just about the company but also about science and technology related topics, one can find very useful. We also had the opportunity to attend a very informative grad school seminar, which informed us about the application process along with some other useful tips on applying to grad school.

Week 7:

This week was dedicated to completing the final presentation of the REU program. The final presentation passed through several phases of critique and reviews to ensure we gave the best presentation possible. Conclusions to experiments that had been done over the course of the program were summarized and finalized in order to input the information onto the presentation.

Week 8:

This week, more experiments were done on key factors that possibly affect the effectiveness of WTMDs. We also presented our summer research to our CCICADA partners during the CCICADA weekly meetings.Preparation for the technical report and evaluation of the summer REU were also in the works.

Week 9:

In this week , we had our third visit to MetLife stadium and here we were able to perform some experiments similar to those we had performed earlier at the Rutgers university campus. Technical reports and evaluations were also finalized in order to conclude the summer research.

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Presentations

• First presentation slides
• Final presentation slides
• Final presentation video

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Additional Information

• My Mentor: Dr Christie Nelson
• Teammate: Dexter Harris