Northrop tapped for NIH work

Northrop Grumman Corp. won a six-year, $29.4 million contract from a National Institutes of Health to develop a database and Web portal to centralize and integrate immunology data, the company said yesterday.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases awarded the contract to Northrop Grumman's information technology division in Herndon, Va.

The Immunology and Data Analysis Portal provides an integrated database containing information from the institute's Division of Allergy, Immunology and Transplantation funded studies, analysis tools and a Web portal toolkit.

The system will have four major components: a central data archive; an integrated data warehouse; an electronic workspace with integrated analysis tools; and technical training, assistance and support resources. Together these tools will facilitate immunological research and allow scientific findings to be published faster.

The work will be performed at the defense contractor's facility in Rockville, Md., and in a laboratory at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. In addition to the university medical center, other project teammates include the Kevric Co., Inc. of Silver Spring, Md., Unicorn Solutions Inc. of Reston, Va., and Biomind LLC of Columbia, Md.

Headquartered in Los Angeles, Northrop Grumman is No. 2 on Washington Technology's 2004 Top 100 list. The company employs 120,000 workers and had 2003 revenue of $26.2 billion.