By Patrick Baron

NORMAL – A team of researchers at Illinois State University has received a $300,000 grant to continue development of a device that can help police identify dangerous substances.

Provided by the National Institute of Justice, the grant will fund research and development of a portable mass spectrometer – which research member and Associate Professor of Analytical Chemistry Christopher Mulligan said can measure the mass of specific molecules in dangerous substances.

“What we do then is to take that information to help idenfity the specific molecules,” Mulligan explained. “In the forensic realm, that traditionally is drugs specific with abuse, explosives, things of that nature.”

Mulligan also said once they recieve data from the mass spectrometer, they will relay the information to forensic scientists and law enforcement officers to help them work more efficiently.

“There’s quite a bit out there that are not very different, from a chemical perspective,” explained Mulligan. “So giving them the tools to more effectively determine what these are and to do the law enforcement activities is definitely something we set out to help with.”

This grant is the third provided to the research team since they began developing the portable mass spectrometer.

Patrick Baron can be reached at [email protected].