Tuesday, July 22, 2008

BBN brings in $12M NSF grant for GENI Project

By Mass High Tech Staff

The National Science Foundation has awarded technology research and development firm BBN Technologies Corp. of Cambridge a $12 million grant to design and construct prototypes of IT infrastructure that support network sciences and engineering experiments, according to BBN.

The three-year grant was assigned to BBN’s Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) Project Office, which plans to use the funds to award contracts to 29 university-industrial teams to work on the system, BBN reported.

BBN said the GENI network infrastructure would enable researchers from multiple disciplines to avoid the limitations of Internet-circumscribed research environments. The firm plans to have conferences three times per year to show its progress in the endeavor.

Known widely for developing part of the forerunner network to Internet, BBN is a 60 year-old firm with 700 employees in Cambridge, Middletown, R.I., and five U.S. facilities outside New England.