HERNDON, Va., Oct. 21, 2004 (PRIMEZONE) -- Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) has been awarded a contract by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, to develop a database and web portal to centralize and integrate immunology data from NIAID's Division of Allergy, Immunology and Transplantation funded studies. These tools will help to facilitate immunological research and promote more rapid publication of scientific findings, making new discoveries available more quickly for more integrated analysis and interpretation.
The contract is valued at $29.4 million over six years, which includes a two-year base period and one four-year option to Northrop Grumman's Information Technology (IT) sector.
"Our solution is an integrated toolkit for the community of research scientists," said Wood Parker, president of the IT sector's Federal Enterprise Solutions business unit. "Our overall solution combines scientific methods and advanced IT for a solid bioinformatics approach."
The Immunology and Data Analysis Portal (ImmPort) provides an integrated database, analysis tools and web portal toolkit, which will have four major components: a central data archive, an integrated data warehouse, an electronic workspace with integrated analysis tools, technical training, technical assistance and technical support resources.
"Our ImmPort toolkit will serve the data archiving needs of the large research programs supported by NIAID through readily scalable open-source architecture," said Michele Kang, vice president of Health Solutions for Northrop Grumman IT. "In addition, our solution streamlines processes for contributing to, accessing and exchanging high-quality data sets and facilitates collaboration across scientific research communities."
Work will be performed at the Northrop Grumman facility in Rockville, Md., and in Dr. Richard Scheuermann's laboratory at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. In addition to the university medical center, other collaborators on the program include The KEVRIC Company, Inc., Silver Spring, Md.; Unicorn Solutions, Reston, Va.; and Biomind LLC, Columbia, Md.
Northrop Grumman Information Technology, headquartered in Herndon, Va., is a trusted IT leader and premier provider of advanced IT solutions, engineering and business services for government and commercial clients. The company's technological leadership spans such areas as homeland security solutions, secure wireless, cyber and physical assurance, IT and network infrastructure, managed services, knowledge management, modeling and simulation, and geospatial intelligence solutions.