The George Washington University and Telos Corporation have signed a five-year agreement to support research and development in big data and data analytics in Northern Virginia.
The industry-academic partnership will support research and development projects that use high-performance computing to focus on key issues of national significance: cyber and physical security, and how research and development on algorithms and analytic tools can solve some of the major challenges facing the United States.
The partnership combines the educational and research objectives of GW with the cybersecurity, secure mobility and identity management capabilities of Telos Corporation.
"The partnership with Telos demonstrates how academia and a leading industry corporation can come together to address issues that affect so many in our society,” said Ali Eskandarian, dean of the GW Virginia Science and Technology Campus. “In Telos, one of our VSTC neighbors and one of the premier companies in the Commonwealth of Virginia, we are fortunate to have a partner with equal commitment to advance the economic development of the region."
As part of the agreement, GW will establish a data analytics research center to be housed at the VSTC and will hire research specialists, who will collaborate with Dr. Eskandarian and Richard Robinson, chief technology officer of Telos Corporation, to conduct research to develop and test security threat models, risk modeling and enterprise impact assessment. Telos is supporting the project by providing the technical knowledge and resources to help develop the research center. Mr. Robinson, former chief information officer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, will lead various projects focusing on algorithm development for contextual and predictive analytics.
“The American experience clearly shows that collaboration between academia and industry helps to promote more rapid technological advances, which in turn spur economic growth and development,” Telos CEO John Wood said. “In this same light, our partnership with VSTC will lead to real-world solutions addressing the most complex and critical concern of our time—how to assess risk and maintain security in a world of ever-changing threats—and will help further establish Northern Virginia’s leadership role in cybersecurity.”
The partnership is the latest development in a well-established relationship between GW and Telos. Telos has served as an industry partner in GW’s annual Teachers in Industry Project, offering educators a multi-day externship at its headquarters to show them the skills students will need to get a job with the company after college. In addition, Mr. Wood serves on the advisory board for VSTC.
Virginia Secretary of Technology Karen Jackson applauded the announcement, saying, “This collaborative research agreement between George Washington University’s Virginia Science and Technology Campus and Telos Corporation represents another big step in Virginia’s efforts to bring together the best and the brightest in the commonwealth to tackle the tough challenges our nation faces in cyberspace. I want to thank GW and Telos for taking the initiative to create this partnership and further help make Virginia a leader in cybersecurity.”
Tom Russo, assistant vice president for industry and corporate research at GW, said that the university’s collaboration with Telos benefits both parties and “is a model of the relationships GW continues to develop with corporations.”
“Telos is a visionary company, and we have identified multiple areas where our interests are aligned,” he said. “We are looking forward to many future opportunities to work together.”