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21 April 2016

Taking Action on Explosive Weapons in the Shadow of Big Ben

The Rt Hon Lindsay Hoyle, MP, Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons discussing landmine detection with Dr Jamie Barras from the Department of Informatics, King's College London.

Houses of Parliament at dusk
Houses of Parliament
landmine

On 21 April, a team from the Department of Informatics got to show their latest explosives sensor for humanitarian demining at an event organised by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Explosive Weapons.  The event took place on Speaker’s Green, in the shadow of Big Ben.  There, the King's team demonstrated a radiofrequency-based spectroscopic sensor that detects the presence of specific explosives to APPG Chair, Roger Mullin, MP, Deputy Speaker, the Rt Hon Lindsay Hoyle, MP, Shadow Foreign Secretary, the Rt Hon Hilary Benn, and many others. The research, funded by charity, Find A Better Way, and led by Prof. Kaspar Althoefer, and Drs Panagiotis Kosmas and Jamie Barras, has produced a prototype device that is now ready for first-stage trials, to take place in Croatia in the next few months. 

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