SAIC-Frederick to Bail out Fannie-Mae

OK, well not exactly.  But I did just read a breaking story that SAIC-Frederick has won a contract valued at $5.2 BILLION US dollars (that’s like almost a million EURO).  He’s a snippet of the story.  You can read the entire press release HERE:

Sept 29, 2008 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX News Network/ — Company to Continue Providing Operations and Technical Support to the Federally Funded Research and Development Center in Frederick, Md.

Science Applications International Corporation (NYSE: SAI) today announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary SAIC-Frederick, Inc. has been awarded a follow-on contract by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to provide operations and technical support to NCI’s Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC) in Frederick, Md.

The single award contract has a three-year base period of performance, five one-year award-term options, and one two-year option, for an estimated contract value of $5.2 billion if all options are exercised.

The FFRDC is one of only 38 national laboratories in the United States and the only one solely dedicated to cancer and HIV/AIDS research. The FFRDC strives to develop new technologies and translate scientific discoveries into novel agents for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer and AIDS. SAIC has been the operations and technical support contractor for the FFRDC since 1995, and in 2000 formed SAIC-Frederick to continue the work. The contract is the largest single research contract awarded by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Under the new contract, SAIC-Frederick will provide operations and technical support to the overall mission of the NCI within three major focus areas: basic research, translational research and development, and preclinical research and development. SAIC-Frederick employs more than 1,700 scientific, technical, and support personnel, and manages a comprehensive suite of cutting-edge advanced technologies in genomics, proteomics, nanotechnology, optical and electron microscopy, and high-performance biomedical computing.

Under the current contract, SAIC-Frederick supports more than 300 clinical trials, and manages a pilot program of community hospitals in 14 states studying how best to bring the latest, evidence-based cancer care to rural, inner-city, and underserved patients. It also operates two biopharmaceutical manufacturing facilities — one for NCI and the other for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ Vaccine Research Center. These facilities produce drugs, vaccines, and other biologics for use in clinical trials.

There are 50 jobs posted today on their Job Board, from Drivers and accountants through PhD Post Docs. You can see them all HERE

Going to the Birds

I don’t know about you guys, but after SciFoo I have been getting all involved with these Web 2.0 gadgets like Twitter and Blogging (obviously), Google Groups, Wiki’s and now FriendFeed.

So much chatter going about and so many different people I met that I follow and try to keep up with what they’re doing.  Honestly, after coming back from SciFoo I was thinking about how great the experience was and how out of place I felt and how I’d just met this incredible cast of characters.  How could I follow-up on this and use these new connections to my advantage and to advance my personal agenda and make/keep new friend and extract from them some of the science they have trapped in their neurons.  It was at times and overwhelming and discouraging concept.

But then I started adding people via FriendFeed and now I am overwhelmed in a different way.  Overwhelmed by the shear magnitude of the data and stories, news, interesting papers and opinions and the freakin’ breaking edge science.  My god, I don’t know how I am going to keep up with all of this and at the same time keep my customers happy and teach my 16 year old how to drive and keep the goats fed and ready for winter and cut the grass and make sure my Fantasy Football team has the right roster in place and cultivating my Mushroom Farm to save the world….

So add to all of these distraction yet another:  Birdpost.  A sight integrating GoogleMaps with Birding.  It’s pretty simple and elegant.  You create an account and then simply chart the birds as you see them.

Yes, I know this isn’t high-tech Biotech and many of you come here to read all the latest and greatest breaking stories about this Biotech company or that.  But I had always intenbded this Blog to be interactive and I am just looking for new and creative ways to get readers to interwact with this blog.  Maybe the Birds will do it?

Like so many things, this web site is coming out of California, and the only thing I find distracting is that I have to redirect the map from San Francisco to Maryland every time.  So I hope that if a few people from Frederick sign up on this sight we can come out in force and let those guys in California know that we’re here, too. 

So sign up and start loggin your Birds onto the Map.  I need to go back and start logging in some of my Owl sightings next.

And if you don’t have a FriendFeed account, you need to create one.  It is quickly becoming a driving force in the scientific field for research collaboration and data mining.