HHS contracts Herndon company for COVID-19 modeling

GeoSpark Analytics to work on five-year, multimillion contract

Published June 23, 2020 by Sydney Lake

Screenshot of GeoSpark Analytics' coronavirus dashboard

Herndon-based artificial intelligence company GeoSpark Analytics Inc. announced Tuesday it has been awarded a five-year, multimillion-dollar contract to provide COVID-19 and infectious disease modeling for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

An exact contract amount was not disclosed.

“If we’ve learned anything at all about COVID-19, it’s that it affects everything from health to travel to supply chain resiliency to the economy,” GeoSpark Analytics COO John Goolgasian said in a statement. “We are proud that our small group of killer developers, data scientists and mad mathematicians created an AI-driven platform that we like to say provides a FICO score of threat and risk for nearly every point on the globe and is your weather app for operations and planning.”

HHS contracted GeoSpark Analytics, founded in 2017, to use its current Hyperion AI engine and its COVID-19 risk model. GeoSpark Analytics will also develop new AI-driven disease outbreak models as part of the contract.

“Closing our first multiyear contract is a major milestone for our young company,” GeoSpark Analytics President Amanda Brownfield said in a statement. “When I joined in March, we knew we needed to expand our leadership team, add new capabilities and processes to capitalize on our momentum, all while remaining true to our reputation of being obsessively focused on our people, customers and providing technology that is intuitive, powerful and insightful. This new contract is a direct result of that work.”

Since March, the company has closed on five enterprise-level contracts and hired eight employees. The company employs approximately 23 people, including executive leaders, data scientists, product managers and business developers.