Purdue Alumnus

Omer Kiyani
Secure Protection

 Biometric gun lock supports responsible ownership 

New toy cars with sirens were an exciting addition to Omer Kiyani’s (T’04) play time as a child. In fact, he was more excited about figuring out how they worked than with playing with them. When he dismantled his car to understand its inner workings, he tried to convince his brother to give up the second car so he could figure out how to put his own back together.

“I never was intimidated to figure out how things work,” says Kiyani. As he grew older and more knowledgeable, his confidence and skill set grew. For his senior design project in the electrical engineering technology program, he developed an accelerometer that calculated how quickly a vehicle could accelerate from 0 to 60 miles per hour.

It’s his newest innovation, however, that is drawing lots of attention. In February 2015, Kiyani founded Sentinl, a company he describes as one devoted to creating solutions to enable responsible gun ownership. The first solution, to be available in stores this fall, is IDENTILOCKTM. The product uses fingerprint technology to keep a firearm safely locked away yet offer immediate access to an authorized user.

“It’s hard to convey how much effort I have put into trying to make it simple. I wanted to take the hassle away,” he says. “I worked diligently on both keeping it easier to secure and even easier to access.”

He was compelled to create the product after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012. As a gun owner, he didn’t want to be grouped in the category of bad gun owner.

“I wanted to step up and do my part, so I developed a solution that would work for me,” he says. “I won a few awards, and I worked for two years to develop it while working full-time.” He left his full-time job when it was time to move into the production phase of development. Sentinl operates out of TechTown Detroit, a business incubator founded in 2000 by Wayne State University, General Motors, and Henry Ford Health Care System.

Timing has to be right for a new idea to succeed, Kiyani says. “People would not have gone from their regular phones to smartphones without bar and flip phones,” he says. “Iterations at the right level are key. Figuring that out is an important part of the technology endeavor.” 

The IDENTILOCK isn’t Kiyani’s first experience with creating a product with safety in mind. He worked in the automotive industry for several years developing airbag controllers. From software to algorithms, he helped ensure airbag systems functioned the way they were supposed to in order to save lives. His software is saving lives in millions of cars around the world.

“Years of testing and validation goes into that. That’s the skill set I have,” he says. “The systems have to work every single time.” 

Kiyani will take these lessons and skills into any new endeavor at his fledgling company. He and his team hope that IDENTILOCK is the first of many solutions introduced in the gun safety market.