Inn Vateli:
The U.S. Department of Defense is calling on Applied DNA Sciences to secure the electronic guts of the nation’s missile-defense systems.
As part of a two-year contract with the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency, the Stony Brook-based biotech firm is partnering with Hi-Rel Group, a Connecticut manufacturer of highly specialized metal components for what’s known as microelectronic packaging, to produce seals marked with SigNature DNA, Applied DNA Science’s flagship authentication product.
Specifically, the companies will apply SigNature DNA markers to hermetic lids used in microcircuit packaging. Air-tight hermetic packaging is primarily designed to prevent water vapor and other foreign bodies from damaging the contents. These lids will now include plant DNA-based, can’t-be-duplicated anti-tampering seals.
The collaboration is through the missile agency’s Small Business Innovation Research program, which supports emerging technologies that could benefit the U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense System. Applied DNA Sciences signed a two-year, $975,000 SBIR Phase II contract last year, marking real progress in the company’s relationship with the missile-defense crowd, according to Janice Meraglia, Applied DNA’s vice president of government and military programs.
“About two years ago, we submitted a Phase I proposal just to demonstrate the basics of what we would do in a more expansive contract,” Meraglia told Innovate LI. “Now, in the more substantial Phase II, we have to demonstrate our capability to mark microcircuits at full-scale capacity. So we’re looking to engage with more manufacturers.”
And not just manufacturers, but the channel partners who supply them. That led to the collaboration with Hi-Rel Group, “an interesting and different approach to what we normally do,” Meraglia noted.
The need for forgery-proof security protocols is obvious, although many of the microcircuits themselves are standard issue…
