University of Southern California

Government Partners

Why ISI

Since 1972, when ISI was founded to support the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), we consistently have been a leading research source for federal agencies – directly and as a subcontractor for commercial prime contractors.

Current federal customers include:

  • Air Force Office of Scientific Research
  • DARPA
  • Department of Agriculture
  • Department of Education
  • Department of Energy
  • Department of Homeland Security
  • Department of Justice
  • Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity
  • National Institutes of Health
  • National Science Foundation
  • National Institute for Standards and Technology
  • United States Army
  • United States Geological Survey
  • United States intelligence community

Among our advantages for government agencies and prime contractors:

  • a proven record of innovation and delivery, on time and within budget
  • exceptional depth and breadth of information sciences research expertise
  • a close connection with USC’s highly ranked Viterbi School of Engineering
  • the ability to conduct pragmatic, real-world development that reaches well beyond the limitations of most pure-research universities and commercial labs.

ISI's Arlington, VA offices are located near the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies. Many of our researchers on both coasts hold security clearances.

We also are deeply familiar with federal proposal and contracting processes, a growing consideration for primes as federal agencies boost their reliance on prime-led coalitions. ISI offers primes the vision, realism and reliability critical to winning contracts, forging cooperative relationships and delivering valued results – now and in the longer term.

What we do

Current federal contracts include:

  • Center for Large-Scale Strategic Knowledge Integration and Discovery from Multiple Media (CKID): information extraction, integration and pattern discovery initiative
    • Agency: Department of Homeland Security (University Affiliate Center)
  • Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events Risk Analysts’ Workbench (CREATE RAW): common system, multiple software tools and models for terrorism risk and assessment in shared environment
    • Agency: Department of Homeland Security (through USC CREATE )
  • Community Driven Improvement of Globus Software (CDIGS): five-year effort to sustain and enhance widely used Globus Toolkit open-source grid software
    • Agency: National Science Foundation
  • Intelligent Dynamic Control of Filed Programmable Gate Arrays (IDCF): real-time, embedded cognitive processing for remote sensing in national security missons
    • Agency: National Reconnaissance Office
  • Integrated Learning (IL): integrated learning systems, causal models and design experiments for learning from very few examples, using multiple reasoning types.
    • Agency: Defense Advance Research Projects Agency; prime contractor: BBN Technologies Corp.
  • Performance Engineering Research Institute (PERI): unified performance modeling, prediction, automatic optimization and engineering of high-profile applications
    • Agency: Department of Energy - Office of Science
  • Satellite Sensornet Gateway (SSG): sensornet control and command center -- for deploying and operating in-situ sensornets -- that supports Earth science research

We’d like to help you create the advanced technology that fulfills your agency or departmental mission – or enables you to deliver admirably as a prime contractor. For more information, please contact Director of Innovation Winnie Callahan. For intelligence-related conversations, please contact ISI Assistant Director Joe Sullivan.