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The University of Arizona will lead one of five new Department of Homeland Security Centers of Excellence, with a $15 million grant over six years to study border security and immigration.

The UA will direct the research arm of the Center of Excellence for Border Security and Immigration, while its co-leader, the University of Texas at El Paso, will direct the center's educational functions. The center will draw together 10 other research universities — including Arizona State University — for a broad portfolio of multidisciplinary research and development work on new technologies and tools to balance immigration and commerce with effective border security.

"This is going to put border security and immigration as another point of excellence for us," said Leslie Tolbert, the UA vice president for research, graduate studies and economic development. "It's building on great strengths here. If you look at the list of expertise at the University of Arizona, the people who are doing this work in many cases have been doing it for some time. But now we're going to have all these people working together regularly."

The UA was a clear go-to university for border-security research from the start of the process, said Tiffany Lightbourn, program manager for the centers under Homeland Security's Office of University Programs.

"They have a very strong management team with a lot of experience leading multi-institutional projects," Lightbourn said. "They've been a real hub for people interested in border security and research."

Lightbourn said the UA's project leader, Jay Nunamaker, has been a "central figure in making sure academic institutions remain a part of the research debate" in border security.

The UA was selected for its expertise in a broad range of areas, including work in sensor innovations, unmanned aerial vehicles, and border and immigration policy and law.

"We're hoping for tools that will enhance our ability to surveil, screen and have better situational awareness over the border environment," Lightbourn said. "We're hoping they can help us with a better understanding of some of our immigration policy issues, help us understand the perspectives of our neighbors to our north and south, and give us a better sense of who are crossing our borders — and what, when and where."

The center's focus will be to "assess threats and vulnerabilities, improve surveillance and screening, analyze immigration trends, and help to enhance policy and law enforcement efforts," said the Homeland Security announcement.

The other four centers of excellence announced Tuesday by the undersecretary for science and technology are: Explosives Detection, Mitigation and Response; Maritime, Island and Port Security; Natural Disasters, Coast Infrastructure and Emergency Management; and Transportation Security. They will be led by nine other universities.

The centers will be evaluated every two years, and there is opportunity for funding renewal at the end of six years, Lightbourn said. The directors will gather twice a year, and the Department of Homeland Security will hold integrative workshops throughout the year.

"There are definite spaces where the centers will have natural collaborations," Lightbourn said.

Current border-related research at the UA includes new methods in detecting deception in communications; the Dark Web project, which analyzes links in extremist communication online; sensor innovations in optical sciences; and new platforms for deploying sensors. Policy and legal experts will participate from the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy and the Center for Latin American Studies.

Further out, research will focus on new technologies for surveillance, screening, unmanned aerial vehicles, communication analysis and data fusion from multiple sensors. Policy research will cover population dynamics; immigration enforcement; civic integration and citizenship; border risk management; and international governance.

The other partner universities for the center are New Mexico State University, the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, San Diego State University, the University of Texas — Pan American, the University of Minnesota, the University of Washington, West Virginia University, the University of Southern California and the University of Albany.

Other partners include other national labs and federal agencies, private-industry members, Southern Arizona law enforcement agencies, and Mexican and Canadian institutions.