Photo: A bomb-sniffing nose as good as Fido's?

Timothy Swager, a chemistry professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has won a $500,000 Lemelson-MIT award for developing chemical sensors that can detect TNT vapors. Here he holds up the Fido Explosives Detector, aptly given a stereotypical pet dog name by ICx Technologies subsidiary Nomadics.

The device, which incorporates Swager's TNT-smelling technology, is being used by U.S. soldiers in Iraq to detect bombs.

Photo by Lemelson-MIT Program