JOHNSTOWN, PA--(Marketwired - March 01, 2017) - The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency ( NGA) has awarded Concurrent Technologies Corporation ( CTC) a competitively bid prime $498,000 contract to research artificial intelligence (AI) automation capabilities under the agency's Boosting Innovative GEOINT (BIG) program.
Under this contract, Concurrent Technologies Corporation will further advance the state of knowledge in virtual assistants by evolving from a singular user-centric orientation to a viewpoint of the user within an interdependent network of humans and cognitive machines. The goal is to enable task automation and management to be cloud-wide rather than confined within a traditional desktop or server architecture; and augment and scale human analysts' cognition and intelligence via a capability refined for intelligence community needs.
"At CTC, we're very proud of our work to advance technology in a variety of disciplines, especially those that enhance U.S. national security," said Edward J. Sheehan, Jr., Concurrent Technologies Corporation President & CEO. "One of our company's strengths is developing and delivering advanced intelligence; this contract allows CTC to contribute to a difficult technical challenge involving machine learning capabilities and cloud-based technologies that support national security mission needs."
Concurrent Technologies Corporation will provide NGA an AI Analyst Virtual Assistant (AVA) capability, incorporating smart technology to address significant challenges in multi-tasking and processing large quantities of rapidly changing information. The AVA will provide recommendations and predictions based on analysts' needs and tasking and by socializing analysts' activities to one another.
Specifically, Concurrent Technologies Corporation will develop the standards, architecture, and tools to create, run, and manage AVA services within the government's cloud environment. It will apply microservices design patterns and use open-source technologies for a horizontally scalable system that supports and promotes modern DevOps practices. This effort will demonstrate the approach with a reference implementation of the proposed architecture.
"We are pleased to partner with NGA as it leads the way within the intelligence community to evolve intelligence analysis tradecraft, to fully realize the benefits of information sharing via the cloud, and provide machine learning capabilities that enable analysts to focus on the cognitive tasks that human analysts do best," said Pete Hanson, CTC's Senior Director, Intelligence Solutions.
Concurrent Technologies Corporation will perform this work at its Johnstown, Pennsylvania, facility and will partner with the Penn State University College of Information Sciences and Technology and its Artificial Intelligence Research Laboratory.
Concurrent Technologies Corporation (CTC) is an independent, nonprofit, applied scientific research and development professional services organization. Together with our affiliates, Enterprise Ventures Corporation and CTC Foundation, we leverage research, development, test and evaluation work to provide transformative, full lifecycle solutions. To best serve our clients' needs, we offer the complete ability to fully design, develop, test, prototype and build. We support our clients' core mission objectives with customized solutions and strive to exceed expectations. For more information about CTC, visit www.ctc.com.
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