There are mounting concerns over the future potential for H5N1 influenza to cause a pandemic. Those concerns coupled with worries over terrorists launching an attack using that virus or other biological agents have caused the government to fund some research at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Madison.

The National Institute's of Health's Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) announced Thursday it has awarded the Medical College a five-year, $8.1 million grant to develop a rapid, miniaturized, automated diagnostic device to test for the presence of avian flu and most potential bioterrorism agents.

The idea is to develop a low cost tool that can accurately identify bioterrorism agents within one or two hours of testing.

"Our laboratory has pioneered a flexible, rapid, sensitive and specific method of simultaneously detecting multiple pathogens," Kelly Henrickson, M.D., said in a statement Thursday.

Henrickson, the lead investigator for the new research, is professor of pediatrics and microbiology at the Medical College and a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. He has experience in developing testing for microbes that cause disease.

He previously developed technology that is used by physicians worldwide to "rapidly detect the microbes responsible for a variety of illnesses such as aseptic meningitis, chicken pox, chronic cough syndrome, encephalitis, herpes, influenza, pneumonia, SARS, shingles, and West Nile virus," according to the statement.