Source: The Record.

    In the future, a detector will be able to ¡°see¡± under people¡¯s clothes to check for weapons without their knowledge.

    New wireless systems will be able to tell whether a pill has been contaminated or counterfeited, without actually touching it.

    We¡¯re not quite there yet, but these revolutionary advances are possible ¡ª due in part to two high-flying research projects at University of Waterloo that received a total of $6 million in provincial funding yesterday.

    The money, which is matched by federal funding, was announced by Kitchener Centre MPP John Milloy in a lab of the Centre for Intelligent Antenna and Radio Systems.

    That centre, led by electrical and computer engineering Prof. Safieddin Safavi-Naeini, received about $5 million from the province toward its $12.8-million project cost.

    It¡¯s developing next-generation wireless systems that will support advances like biomedical sensors, pharmaceutical engineering and wireless ultra-broadband networks.

    A second project, Submillimeter Instruments for Astronomy, led by UW physics and astronomy Prof. Michel Fich, received about $1 million in provincial money. Total project cost is $6.7 million.

    ¡°Amazing¡± astronomy detectors, built at UW for new telescopes in the U.S., Chile and Hawaii, have other applications that will revolutionize the world, Fich said.

    ¡°These detectors for astronomy will be so fantastic, we expect people to buy them from us for other applications.¡±

    Detector technology can be used to help make an increasingly insecure world, more secure.

    The detectors will be able to tell us if people are concealing weapons as they stroll through a lobby or walk through a subway station, Fich said.

    ¡°It¡¯s possible to use the camera, at these long wavelengths, to look beneath your clothing,¡± Fich said in an interview. ¡°If you have stuff under your clothing like a bomb, you will see the bomb.

    ¡°People have used this ¡ª a very, very crude camera at these wavelengths ¡ª to show people carrying weapons under their clothing. The weapon just stands out because the property of the metal is very, very different from the property of your skin and your flesh.

    ¡°The only way to hide it would be to put it inside another metal, which you would see, so you can¡¯t hide weapons.¡±

    Detector technology also has uses in the health field.

    ¡°It¡¯s not that far of a switch to have many of these sensors read out the activity of the brain to look at say, epileptic seizures and things like that,¡± said Jan Kycia, assistant professor in the physics and astronomy department.

    Meanwhile, researchers at the Centre for Intelligent Antenna and Radio systems are working with UW¡¯s new School of Pharmacy to improve the safety of our drugs.

    Drug counterfeiting is a problem in many countries, said Daryoosh Saeedkia, a research assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering who works at the centre.

    ¡°In the pharmaceutical sense, what we are looking for is having a portable and compact device that can distinguish between, let¡¯s say, a fake drug and a real drug,¡± Saeedkia said.

    The new technology will be able to look at a pill¡¯s quality ¡°without even touching it.¡± to help with safe detection of cancerous tissue.