On Christmas Day in 2009, the suspected terrorist who would become known as the Underwear Bomber boarded a plane at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. Since that day, the airport has searched for ways to improve airport security.
A Gainesville startup may have a piece of the solution.
The Schiphol Group – the Dutch company that runs the airport –invited some of the largest security companies to Schiphol Innovation Days in 2010, a competition to present new technologies and screening procedures. The airport wound up buying 75 of the whole-body backscatter x-ray scanners, months ahead of a European Union certification.
Although the Schiphol Group was an early adopter of the new scanning technology, it felt that the large security companies could not meet all its needs. So, it began a search for new technologies from around the world.
For the 2011 Schiphol Innovation Days in October, the Group invited only small security startups. A U.S. embassy official in the Netherlands contacted tech developers in the U.S., and specifically Florida. Eventually, she reached David Day at the University of Florida Office of Technology Licensing, who recommended Delta R Detection for the competition.
Delta R Detection, a 2011 Cade Prize semi-finalist, has a device that can detect trace amounts of explosives by analyzing the light reflected off a surface. For instance, if a bomb-maker brushed his fingers on a suitcase after crafting the device, Delta R’s device could detect trace molecules of explosive on the bag.
Check out WCJB TV-20′s Technology Spotlight on Delta R Detection’s device below.
The Delta R team submitted a three-minute video describing their system and its capabilities in September. Of the 25 companies that submitted videos, eight were selected to test their product or procedure in Amsterdam.
At Schiphol, Max Lemaitre, the company’s chief technology officer, and the Delta R team gave a 20-minute presentation of their technology and answered questions from a 12-person panel for nearly two hours. At the end of the conference, Delta R was selected along with two other companies to field-test their procedures in 2012.
Lemaitre said Delta R’s technology was especially attractive to Schiphol because it does not add additional time to current scanning procedures and can easily attach to existing x-ray infrastructure. Lemaitre said travelers would not even notice the additional safety scan.
“This was a great opportunity for us,” said Lemaitre. “We haven’t earned TSA or EU certification, so it is amazing to work with an airport willing to work with technologies before they have gone through certification. It’s a very preemptive program.”
Unlike in the U.S., many European airports are privately owned by companies like the Schiphol Group, which allows them to drive their own purchasing decisions, rather than requiring certification and mass purchasing through a regulatory group like the TSA.
According to Lemaitre, the agreement with Schiphol will be a tremendous opportunity, beyond the obvious benefit of winning the competition.
“This is not just a ‘Hey, come test your tech at a screening point for a few days’ agreement,” he said. “They’re giving a very collaborative agreement in which we both negotiated what would constitute a successful field test. They obviously want us to succeed, which is very refreshing and nice for us.”
In a further spirit of collaboration, the agreement includes a showcase to display Delta R’s results to Europe’s scientific and regulatory community.
“The big thing for us in our industry, people don’t really trust you until you have a reputation,” Lemaitre said. “So you really need a customer before you get customers. If this goes well, it essentially means we could sell units off the bat, which is a huge step.”
Though he said the company has gained a lot of traction with investors since the competition, Delta R Detection’s most likely investor may be the Schiphol Group itself. In addition to owning the airport, the Group also manages its grounds, which includes an aviation tech incubator and a venture fund dedicated to aviation and security startups.
“It sounds like Schiphol may be interested in setting up a joint-venture or collaboration in the Netherlands,” Lemaitre said. “There are a lot of funds for high-tech companies exporting to Europe. As soon as you have a customer, investors all of a sudden start coming out of the woodwork.”
The company is preparing to return to Schiphol in the summer of 2012 to field-test its system.
“Just getting to fly to the Netherlands was a big deal,” he said. “Now that we’ve won, it’s really opened a huge door for us to move forward. They’re really going to help us move towards making this product happen, and we are really excited about that.”
