Research Proposal Requests

The Institute for Homeland Security at Sam Houston State University is invested in creating an opportunity for scholars and practitioners to present timely and relevant research products for publication on our website (IHSOnline.org). Currently, we are accepting proposals that pertain to our identified critical concepts (see below). Selected proposals should be crafted as translational works for practitioner audiences. The selected proposals will have an opportunity to develop a range of products including Research Briefs, Extended Briefs, Multi-media engagements, Literature reviews, and White Papers. Proposal selection will be competitive, and authors of selected proposals will receive an honorarium for completed work of up to $12,000. Those interested in submitting proposals should CLICK HERE for the application form and HERE for the author guidelines.


Critical Concepts



Works that address these critical concepts below will be considered as the highest priority for selection when evaluating submissions. The research proposal form features a drop down menu that may be used to identify a submission as directly related to one of the following:


  • Workplace Violence: Exploring detection and prevention methodology that is teachable to security practitioners and company personnel at large, that meets operational, compliance, legal, medical, law enforcement and security management regulatory standards.
  • Supply Chain Risks: Identifying best practices for efficiently and meaningfully assessing critical infrastructure corporations vulnerable supply chain interdependencies to determine 1) how to effectively quantify crisis management readiness by key suppliers such that 2) critical infrastructure corporations can make strategic choices using identified risks in decision making.
  • Security Drone and Robot Deployment: Assessing the cost effectiveness of security drones and security robots as part of government approved security management for: access control, visitor management, cargo inspection, perimeter patrol, loss of containment detection, occupational safety management and emergency management (e.g., firefighting, enclosed space rescue, toxic release containment, at-height emergency maintenance).
  • Mass casualty Response: Benchmarking best practices for hospitals and medical centers in Texas to identify more effective teams, processes, and staffing products, responding to a mass casualty event.
  • Cyber-Security Threat: Benchmarking best practices in responding to a cyber-security threat at hospitals and medical centers in Texas, including attacks (e.g., ransomware), or accidental breaches involving a loss of protected data or interruption of critical operating systems which degrades operating capabilities.
  • Social Network Analysis (SNA): Broadly, using a SNA approach to identify organizational personnel and staffing decisions and explore the viability of that address how private and public organizations could modify structure and processes more effective teams, processes, and staffing products, while maintaining workforce and production compliances.
  • Process Safety: Assessment of whether or not, and how, process safety countermeasures can be incorporated into USG approved security management programs for access control and intrusion detection purposes.

Adobe Acrobat Reader is required in order to submit the application from within the PDF.