Abigail Curran, a CINA-funded undergraduate researcher studying Criminal Justice and Sociology at Clemson University, received the 2024 Tom Barker Outstanding Undergraduate Award from the Southern Criminal Justice Association (SCJA). She was recognized with this award for both her outstanding classroom performance (a GPA of 3.93) and her research contributions. Curran is a research assistant on the CINA project “Understanding and Disrupting the Formation of New Criminal Networks: The Case of Novel Illicit Drug Trafficking Operations” based at Clemson University and co-led by CINA PIs: Tom Sharkey and Bryan Miller.
On this project, she held interviews with law enforcement and led their qualitative analysis to better understand the structure and operations of fentanyl trafficking networks. She shared how this could lead to better data for network analytics to disrupt these networks during her SCJA poster presentation. As discussed during his statement on fentanyl to Congress on May 3, 2023, Assistant Director Matthew Millhollin, HSI said, “HSI is attacking this illicit narcotics supply chain through an intelligence-based counternarcotics operation that blends traditional investigative and analytical techniques with interagency collaboration, industry partnerships, and computer-based tools.”
Clemson believes that their project will help to better understand the role of different agencies in disrupting emerging criminal networks and create stakeholder-based network analytics that can be used by HSI and other DHS partners.
DHS/Stakeholder Impact:
This research aligns with the DHS strategic goal to Counter Terrorism and Homeland Security Threats by helping to better detect and disrupt emerging criminal networks that traffic synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl. Clemson’s research helps to better understand the network formation process and disrupt it at different geographical scales and across different jurisdictions. Therefore, the research is relevant to Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) as they counter transnational criminal organizations at the international, national, and local scale.