Better, Faster, More Effective

Host: Deepak Saini, Media Relations Chief, Science and Technology Directorate, Department of Homeland Security

Guest: Luke Watko, Director of Emergency Prevention and Response, Science and Technology Directorate, Department of Homeland Security

[00:00:00] Luke: I like to say, “There’s no emergencies in research and development.” There’s nobody shooting at a researcher at S&T, but the customer that we have, there are people. So, as these challenges arise in first responders, how do we balance what we currently have on the books with what’s the new thing that we should be looking at? 

[00:00:26] Dave DeLizza: This is technologically speaking, the official podcast for the Department of Homeland Security, Science & Technology Directorate, or S&T, as we call it. Join us as we meet the science and technology experts on the front lines, keeping America safe. 

[00:00:39] Deepak: Welcome to Technologically Speaking. I’m your host, Dee Saini. We’re joined by Luke Watko, Director of S&T’s Emergency Prevention and Response Division. When disasters strike, whether they’re natural or manmade, Luke’s team is at the forefront of developing solutions that help first responders prepare and respond. Welcome, Luke.

[00:00:59] Luke: Thanks, Dee. It’s good to be here.

[00:01:00] Deepak: Yeah, good to have you. So, you have a very amazing portfolio where you really look out for the holistic welfare of first responders, their response efforts, the tools that they have, are they safe while they’re responding. And, also, it helps create better and safer communities as a whole and we’ll get into that. But, first, I’d like to dive into you being at S&T. How long have you been here?

[00:01:23] Luke: I’ve been at S&T in one capacity or another since roughly 2014. I came on as a contractor and then worked my way through and became a fed in 2019 and then came up to the emergency prevention response as the director in 2023.

[00:01:43] Deepak: And I am sure you saw a huge shift of just the workforce environment and culture during the COVID-19 lockdowns. From what I understand, you decided you needed to make a difference in the work that you did. Talk to me a little bit about that breakthrough period and how that changed your trajectory.

[00:02:03] Luke: Yeah, it’s a story that I like to tell fairly often. When I started at DHS, I was deep in the world of like finance, robotics and analytics down in our finance shop just optimizing systems, automating workflows, improving efficiency – that sort of type of work. It was fairly rewarding, but at the end of the day, I was making processes better but not really people’s lives better if you get the gist on that.

[00:02:29] Deepak: Oh yeah.

[00:02:29] Luke: When the pandemic hit, I remember watching doctors and nurses treating Covid patients, having fire and police and EMS out there keeping our community safe and functioning properly. And I was sitting there talking with my wife and I’m like, “What am I doing to help them? How can I make any sort of impact, not just in my small microcosm of finance, but what can I do that is long lasting?” So, I kind of took a step back and, fortunately, the First Responders Capability Program Manager and the Emergency Prevention Response Solutions Director position came open, and it was really an answer to that question. How can I take my skills and technologies and support those who are supporting us? Really, S&T is the only organization across the United States that is that champion of all needs of all first responders. You have advocates for specific domains. So, like, our US Fire Administration works on fire. There’s NIJ, which is law enforcement; NIST; public safety comms, which is telecommunications. But really only S&T kind of gives us that cross domain shift, and it’s taking on this role and moving forward.

[00:03:44] Deepak: That’s amazing. You know, you have a sort of a background where you have an innate ability, and I think it’s in your DNA to want to serve. So, Luke, as you approach your work and with the years you’ve put into S&T, is there anything that surprised you?

[00:04:01] Luke: So, the thing that most surprised me about S&T is just the scope of the work that we do here. We are the underpinning research and development arm of every one of those well-known entities – DHS, CBP, Coast Guard, Secret Service. And without the technologies we’re pushing forward to support them, you don’t have them as effective as they are. Everything from first responders to radiological to bio, to counter drone, counter UAS, transnational organized crime. It’s impressive, really.

[00:04:39] Deepak: I love how you laid that out. I want to hear about the first responder capability model. How does that work and how does it really help propel S&T’s mission forward?

[00:04:50] Luke: So, we are that organization that advances and advocates for their needs to make the best tools. The World Fire Congress, that was, we had our inaugural meeting last year. So, we’re the industry engagement chair for that. We have our First Responders Resource Group. So, we have 160 responders across every FEMA region, in every domain that we sit down, and we say, “Hey, what are your, needs?” And we put that conference on yearly. We also have something called Project Responder, which is a formal survey where we go out and we survey every law enforcement, fire department, every responder we can find, and we rack and we stack those gaps. And we publish those online. We have a few international engagements, as well. So, we have the International Forum to advance first responders’ innovation. So, we take our gaps that we’ve gathered for the first responder resource group, and we say, “Okay, does this match international gaps as well?” And, we have the opportunity to collaborate with other countries, so we’re helping not only the responders in the United States, but worldwide. Okay. So, other entities – the International Associate Chiefs of Police, National Fire Protection Agency and the EMS National Associations, as well – it’s a group effort.

[00:06:11] Deepak: And what are the types of things you’re hearing from first responders these days?

[00:06:14] Luke: So, recent issues that are coming up is a lot of the, “We have understaffing and recruitment issues.” We’re seeing increased firefighter, police and police fatalities. So, we’re trying to say, “All right, how do we do more with less?” Because we can’t continue to, or we’re trying to figure out how we can, bring in more responders into agencies and maybe looking at doing research on that. But in the meantime, we have who we have doing that job. So, how do we train them better with our Training and Performance Optimization Project? How do we detect threats with our fentanyl radiation and explosives detection? How do we do interoperability? A lot of times you can go from one jurisdiction to another, and they cannot talk to each other. Making secure, resilient and interoperable communications for multi-agency coordination.

[00:07:13] Deepak: Mm-hmm

[00:07:13] Luke: Let’s look at specifically at fire. There’s been, the number one global gap for probably the last five years has been 3D geolocation. And the use case for that is – so imagine a firefighter in downtown Chicago responding to a 60-story fire. Okay? He’s going to run up the staircase and hit the staging area and, then all of a sudden, they get smoke inhalation, or something falls on him and he’s pinned. Before, there’s really no way of knowing where that individual is in that location besides the radio checks. Now, imagine that person can’t get to their radio. So, how do we enable knowing exactly where that person is, sub-meter resolution? So, we’re, we’ve kind of looked at a few technologies on there. One of them is our Pointer program, which is our precision, outdoor-indoor navigation and tracking for emergency responders. 

[00:08:11] Deepak: Mm-hmm. 

[00:08:12] Luke: So that, the goal behind that is submeter resolution. So, if you can get submeter, you’re, you know, exactly what floor that person is and you have the X and the Y coordinate and it submits that information back down to the ground station. So, the people downstairs know exactly where they are. And oh, by the way, if that person goes horizontal, it sends out a distress beacon, as well. So, hopefully we don’t have an issue where we’re losing firefighters in the future due to us not knowing where they are.

[00:08:46] Deepak: Pointer is in the working stages of being commercialized, correct?

[00:08:51] Luke: We have a company that’s taking that on right now and has put some of their funding behind it and working to move that to the commercial market. We’re not trying to develop something that goes to ICE or CBP, and then our state, local first responders never see it because it’s some government only thing. We’re really looking to commercialize this on the open market.

[00:09:13] Deepak: And, you know, aside from Pointer, you have a handful of very amazing projects that you and your team are working on that, another one of those is C-Thru. I would love for you to walk me through that.

[00:09:26] Luke: The C-Thru technology to see through smoke – so you can be completely blacked out in a building, and it has edge detection and AI. So, it goes through, finds all of your edges of all your walls, your pathways, has – will hopefully, eventually have – breadcrumbs for where you came from. So, its, its augmented reality headset that bolts onto your helmet still allows you to put in your self-contained breathing apparatus and see through it. And it gives you that level of, of situational awareness for the responder. So, it’s that flip side of Pointer. So, Pointer gives the situational awareness to the ground crew to know where their responders are at. C-Thru gives the situational awareness to the responder to understand where they’re at in that space. It has a pointer back to where the entrance is, and you’re seeing in green scale everywhere that you have been. Doesn’t matter if it’s completely smoked out or not. We’re now kicking off what we’re calling a national field assessment with 80 departments across the United States, everything from FDNY and a couple of other partners, as well.

[00:10:36] Deepak: And the great thing about conducting the national field test for C-Thru technology means that they can give you as much feedback as possible with all of the different sort of environments. And so that, that’s a great part of your R&D scope.

[00:10:51] Luke: Yeah, most certainly. We’ve done two of our operational field assessments and now, of course, our national field assessment. And we’re finding that, hey, there are some edge cases that we didn’t take into account. For instance, the batteries, if we start overheating those, they tend to start to overheat the rest of the electronics. So, we’re putting in, “How do we mitigate the heat soak on the materials? How do we do better material science to be able to mitigate that? Can we keep sediment from landing on any of the lenses or the cameras for the technology? And can we put coatings on it to be able to do that?” And, as we find more and more mission sets from our partners doing these national field assessments, we’re going to find more and more of these edge cases that will make it into the final product and hopefully cover 99.9% of anything that we could possibly run into.

[00:11:46] Deepak: Another great piece of technology that your team is working hard on is the wildland firefighter respirator. What’s interesting about this is, there is nothing currently out there that wildland firefighters can use to help protect their lungs and, the particles that they breathe in. And, from what I understand, this is also going through, it’s gone through, testing and trials and now it’s going through certification. And once this gets greenlit, this would be the first technology available to really help save a lot of firefighters lives.

[00:12:21] Luke: Yeah, most certainly. Wildland firefighters, specifically, face pretty significant respiratory hazards due to the prolonged exposure to smoke and gases while in wildfire operations. Your traditional SCBA, or self-contained breathing apparatus, is kind of impractical when you’re out there jumping around in the bush for days on end, cutting fire lines. You just can’t wear O2 the entire time. You can’t pack around a bottle. So, we thought, “Alright, well, how do we create some sort of a technology that filters the air that they’re breathing and gets rid of all of their carcinogens?” And fire is that one, that one occupation that is cancer-causing. It has been deemed a cancer-causing occupation. So, anything that we can do to help them survive another day, not have cancer in 20 years when they retire, is going to be huge. So, a lot of our wildland firefighters are out there with a wet bandana around right now as their, their breathing treatment. So, what we did is, we have a powered air purifying respirator, so it’s, or a PAPR – it filters out almost every particulate that you could possibly throw at it. It can run for eight plus hours on a single charge or a battery pack. It has easily-swappable battery packs. It is designed to force air into, into your face. So, you’re not actually having to have the, the O2 capacity drain of trying to suck air through a filter. It’s that powered air forced into you. So, it’s a lightweight, it’s effective filtration, and it’s really user-friendly and easy to operate. You put this thing on – it’s a hose, it’s a tiny pack that fits on your hip and your mask – and you’re out there protecting yourself instead of putting a bandana on.

[00:14:23] Deepak: Yeah, firefighters are really excited about this one, for sure. I’m sure a lot of the things that first responders are telling you, especially through the First Responder Resource Group, is about the future and, technology is growing so much faster than a lot of folks can keep up with. How do you sort of assess kind of the unknown, like what might be coming down the road and what we might need to build for that?

[00:14:47] Luke: Yeah, so what’s on the horizon? It’s really everything that we’re looking at is how do you integrate data into your standard, workforce. So, can we do AI and machine learning for faster decision making? So, automating data analysis to prioritize resources in real time, taking in autonomous vehicles and drones – so, how do we do robotic assisted search and rescue? So, how do we augment or replace a human responder in those dangerous areas? Again, more information that is usable. So, augmented reality training is another one. Like we talked to a while ago was, responders are hugely understaffed right now.

[00:15:33] Deepak: Mm-hmm

[00:15:34] Luke: So, how do we use immersive realistic VR training for fire, EMS, law enforcement to get them up to speed quicker, not only on their day-to-day job and get them out into the field faster, but any new advancements that comes along? I mean, we can give an underwater robot to a, a fire department or a police department, but if they can’t train on it and get certified on it because they have no capacity in their schedule, then it’s kind of useless. So, we have to be able to make our training better, faster, more effective. Other parts that we’re looking at are smart sensor networks. So, hazard detection, chemical, biological, radiological threats and integrating those threats into our decision-making tree. Then, biometric and health monitoring.

[00:16:30] Deepak: Oh, okay.

[00:16:31] Luke: So, real time tracking respiratory exposures, fatigue levels. I mean, there, there has been a huge issue with firefighter fatalities. I mean, 89 firefighters died in 23. In 2023, the leading causes were cardiac arrest events. In 2024, there were 62. Again, leading causes were cardiac arrest events. So, how do we actually understand what’s going on with our responder, what they have been exposed to? It, it’s all about being able to give the most information that is useful to the responder and getting them up to speed as quickly as possible, and then monitoring them and understanding, “Are they overworked?” Are they being exposed to threats and being able to track that over time. 

[00:17:20] Deepak: You’re hearing a lot from first responders in terms of the increased dangers of their jobs and just from listening to you, I can tell you really take it to heart and you’re implementing that into your research and development and coming up with technology that can not only make first responders, but also the public safer as well. What would you say is the biggest challenge then, working on the first responder mission? 

[00:17:44] Luke: Honestly, advocacy at this point. There’s not really a large advocacy group on the hill to say, “Hey, who is doing the work for these responder organizations?” There’s, there is a severe funding shortage on the first responder research and development pathway. So, if you could, if I could take one thing out of this is, we need our first responders feedback to the hill to say, “Hey, somebody needs to be doing first responder research and development work to help directly drive impacts, across our state, local, tribal, territorial, and our communities really.” Just taking a step back from that, the next thing is the, what comes across my mind is, “Alright, how are we losing people?” So, cardiac arrests, traumatic injuries, line of duty shootings – how do we mitigate or eliminate those? So, that’s the next level of, of where we’re at. And not to say that’s down below the funding thing, but without the funding, we can’t address it.

[00:18:52] Deepak: I want to dive into your military background as an Air Force imagery analyst. And how did that shape who you are, and how does that also kind of inform how you approach your work at S&T?

[00:19:05] Luke: Yeah, there’s a couple of things looking back on, on my imagery days. I was working on the Global Hawk, and I was one of the initial cadre on that for the Air Force and, then again, in the private sector with the Navy. Working on that crew mentality with aircrew kind of gives you this comradery with your, your fellow compatriots or however you want to call it. But it kind of makes you feel like you are more than just the sum of yourself. You are that team. And I felt coming into S&T, I’ve really kind of latched onto that there wherever I can, make a difference. I try to make a difference, and I can’t tell you the amount of people that are around me that are of that same mindset.

[00:19:52] Deepak: Yeah, how do you feel like all of that sort of plays toward informing your R&D work?

[00:19:58] Luke: Well, it definitely gives me the leg up on a lot of different technologies that we’re trying to implement. I have a decent background, like you said, software development; I did that for the Navy for a little while. And then just understanding what the pulse of technology is, if we’re trying to go out here and make some sort of technology that doesn’t really, meet the need. I can generally have a pulse on that before we’re having to go and push out and get user responses back. And it gives us a little more of a success rate when integrating with our folks there.

[00:20:32] Deepak: So, I’m curious to know, when you were young and in school, did you have something in mind you wanted to do that was so different than what you’re doing in with your life right now?

[00:20:43] Luke: So, I was born and raised in a little town in the mountains of Arizona.

[00:20:49] Deepak: Oh, okay.

[00:20:50] Luke: And of course, in Arizona, I was nowhere near the ocean, but I wanted to be a marine biologist. I don’t know why, I enjoyed marine life. I sat down and read every Encyclopedia Britannica article that my grandmother had on anything marine life. 

[00:21:07] Deepak: I love that you said that. That was actually the same thing that I wanted to do first with my life but for me it was driven by the movie Free Willie

[00:21:14] Luke: The main trade in my hometown was mining. So, if it wasn’t marine biology or the Air Force, it was probably going to be a copper miner or BHP or magma or one of the other large mining conglomerates around there. And I did not enjoy the idea of being a miner. It’s a great occupation, but it just somehow didn’t, didn’t call to me.

[00:21:43] Deepak: I hear you have three genius children, one who probably might run the world someday. Do tell.

[00:21:50] Luke: I have a, a son who is five years old, just heck on wheels, doesn’t want to listen, is, is pure chaos, but the best kind. Gives me a smile at every single turn and is so smart and just independent. And then my daughter, who is 15 now, is my light. Like, that kid is the most empathetic, loving kid that you could ever meet. And then there’s the world changer. She’s always been this way. She’s decided that she wants to go, or she got into magnet school, which is – the gifted and talented kids go into those. And she, she turned down the engineering one to go into performing arts, not because she wanted performing arts more. It’s because, her excuse was that she wanted the people skills so that when she went into engineering, she would be a better engineer. And I don’t know where she came up with that, but I just kind of took a…

[00:22:59] Deepak: Wise beyond her years. 

[00:23:00] Luke: Right. So, yeah, we like to keep her in our good graces for whenever she rules the world. 

[00:23:06] Deepak: For anyone listening who is inspired by a lot of what you’re saying, because I would be, what advice would you have for anyone that falls into the same kind of line of work that you do?

[00:23:19] Luke: I mean, straight off the bat, volunteer. If you have the ability to be a local fire volunteer or try and hop on for a ride along, you never know. You might love what you do and have a career change on that. Advocate for first responders. Learn more about their day-to-day trials and understand how they affect your community. Yeah, anything that you can do to advance, not only the first responder, just really get out and be involved in your community and try to just do something good at the end of the day to, to advance your community forward.

[00:23:57] Deepak: And you do so much good work. Luke, in, in your role, I can imagine how many tough days you must have. And that’s what a lot of people don’t realize is that, you know, a lot of other folks out in the country, they can go to bed safely at night because people like you are working hard behind the scenes on your toughest day, where you kind of feel like you’ve hit a wall or there’s a roadblock or you know, there just doesn’t seem to be a light forward. And I’m sure you’ve run into those. What fuels your fire and what kind of keeps you going?

[00:24:27] Luke: Well, I like to say, I mean, there’s no emergencies in research and development, and what do I mean by that? I mean, there’s nobody shooting at a researcher at S&T, but the customer that we have, there are people. So, as these new challenges arise in first responders, how do we balance what we currently have on the books with what’s the new thing that we should be looking at? But it’s how do we, at the end of the day, be most effective for the responders while being the best steward of taxpayer dollars? And that becomes a fun juggling act. It’s, it is a lot of beating your head against the wall and saying, “Okay, well, do we need to sunset this over here so we can focus on whatever capability is popping up? Or will this not be an issue in six months? And then we should continue with what we’re doing now?”

[00:25:34] Deepak: Luke Watko, Director for the Emergency Prevention and Response Division at S&T. It’s been a pleasure. It’s been great to talk to you and learn more about what you do, and you have such an important job. And thank you for your hard work. 

[00:25:48] Luke: The last couple of years has been one of the more rewarding things that really I’ve ever done. 

[00:25:53] Deepak: It’s been great listening to you and picking your brain and learning to see what makes you tick and just [00:26:00] seeing what a huge impact you’re making for first responders in the general community. Thank you so much.

[00:26:06] Luke: Thank you, Dee, appreciate it.

[00:26:07] Dave: Thank you for listening to Technologically Speaking. To learn more about what you’ve heard in this episode, check out the show notes on our website, and follow us on Apple Podcasts and YouTube, and on social media at DHS SciTech. D H S S C I T E C H. Bye!