For Immediate Release
Date:  May 7 , 2007

DOE Awards 4 Innovation Research and Technology Transfer Grants to IIa

Oak Ridge, TN.–The Department of Energy has awarded three small business innovation research (SBIR) grants to Information International Associates.  These awards were of the 287 grants awarded nationally from a pool of 1,318 applications.  In addition, IIa received one of DOE’s 40 grants awarded nationally for small business technology transfer (STTR) for a project in which IIa will partner with the University of Tennessee’s Center for Information Technology Research (CITR). 

SBIRs and STTRs are multiphase government initiatives to fund new and innovative "high-risk" technologies.  IIa received Phase I grants for research in the category “discover, search, and communication of textual knowledge resources in distributed systems.”  For example, the STTR grant with UT CITR is to develop an automated tool for locating, harvesting, and storing experimental scientific and technical data. 
Dr. Jack Dongarra, CITR’s director, explains, “This will allow us to explore the automated harvesting tools for science and technical data that will locate, transform, and place desired and relevant data into a user-specified repository for further use.”

Including IIa’s awards, DOE awarded only eight SBIR and two STTR grants in Tennessee.  In its three SBIR projects, IIa will look at a context-based spell-check tool, a system for automatically cleansing large quantities of harvested information, and a system that will provide website security by “resolving” web domains/IPs.  The data cleansing SBIR is being done in cooperation with INRAD, a spin off of IMTI, the Integrated Manufacturing Technology Initiative, both locally founded and managed companies.

IIa president Bonnie C. Carroll attributes the success of the company's grant applications to the close work IIa does with federal managers of scientific and technical information, “We have a long history of supporting innovations that information organizations in federal agencies need to solve the challenges they come up against.  In fact, the company was founded to manage an interagency group of federal scientific and technical information managers, CENDI (www.cendi.gov), to solve information problems common to the agencies.” 

Carroll added, “The information world is changing so quickly.  Information forms and formats continue to evolve.  You have to be innovative to deal with the myriad issues around collecting, accessing, and preserving information so that it continues to be useful and accessible today and in the future.  Our work with key clients like DOE ‘s Office of Scientific and Technical Information (www.osti.gov) and the U.S. Geological Survey (www.usgs.gov) enable us to work on the cutting edge of information management.”

IIa worked with the Tennessee SBIR Proposal Assistance Center throughout the application process. 

Headquartered in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, IIa provides information management, systems, and technology services to government, industry, nonprofit and academic organizations, and international entities.  IIa is a woman-owned, small business with 200 employees in 10 states, the District of Columbia, and the United Kingdom.  More information about IIa can be found at www.iiaweb.com.