IARPA invests in high-risk, high-payoff research programs
Next Century Corporation, a software company founded in 2002, announces a three-year contract award from the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) Mercury Program to create SAFE , a SIGINT-based Anticipation of Future Events. SAFE is an applied research project for the detection and prediction of future events (terrorist activity, civil unrest, rare disease outbreak, and military actions) in the Middle East and North Africa regions of the world.
“Anticipating events well before they occur would allow us to prevent or minimize loss of life,” says John McBeth, President and CEO of Next Century. “It is a perfect fit for our mission.”
IARPA invests in high-risk, high-payoff research programs to tackle some of the most difficult challenges of the agencies and disciplines in the Intelligence Community (IC). The Mercury Program, led by Dr. Kristen Jordan, seeks to develop methods for continuous, automated analysis of foreign SIGINT in order to anticipate and/or detect terrorist activity, military actions, political crises and disease outbreaks.
Next Century’s team includes world-class researchers and experts in predictive analytics, including the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute, Draper, Virginia Tech, Harvard University, Ward Associates, Northeastern University, Thresher Ventures, Rensselaer (RPI) and Carnegie Mellon to tackle this significant challenge.
About Next Century
Founded in response to the events of 9/11, Columbia, MD-based Next Century (http://www.nextcentury.com), is a privately held technology company creating software solutions for the healthcare and national security sectors. Its leadership and staff are dedicated to providing solutions that assist their clients in protecting our nation and saving lives. The company is the winner of numerous Best Places to Work awards from the Baltimore Sun, Washington Post and Baltimore Magazine, and the 2012 National Capital Business Ethics Award. Next Century has offices in Columbia, Annapolis Junction and McLean, VA.
