The FDA is responsible for protecting and advancing America’s public health. It relies heavily on scientific computing. With its science-centric mission, the FDA needs access to people who understand that scientific computing is science enabled by technology—not technology with science added afterward. FDA partnered with SAIC because of our ability to provide computational scientists who understand both scientific and technological domains.

SAIC enables collaboration among scientists and stakeholders, making results and knowledge transfer available to the scientific community. We select, implement, and support flexible, effective procedures and tools. Our computational scientists deliver solutions in bioinformatics, instrumentation, systems engineering, security, and management--all tailored to meet FDA’s unique scientific computing needs.

SAIC is applying agile methods to reduce development time from multiple years to months. More than delivering simple efficiency, we are helping to achieve scientific breakthroughs by enabling decisions, populating reference publications, and informing drug and device approval. Provenance of the data is crucial; our methods provide a formal and detailed record of who created or changed the data and why, allowing for pedigree recognition.

Climate change is a pressing topic of political and policy debate worldwide. To understand and address it, the United Nations commissioned the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to objectively assess studies and research from the scientific community. The IPCC relies on laboratories in multiple countries to comprehend climate change. Predominant among these laboratories is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL).

SAIC scientists are enhancing GFDL’s complex climate simulation codes and providing deep computational insights to better model extremely complicated atmospheric interactions. SAIC performs myriad tasks, including developing climate models, executing simulation experiments, visualizing simulation results, and delivering very high-volume simulation data. SAIC develops and enhances the core modeling framework that lets research scientists integrate GFDL’s atmospheric and oceanographic models.

SAIC scientists are creating innovative techniques to tackle some of climate modeling’s most difficult challenges. Our efforts provide better models, scientific analysis, and predictions that can reach policymakers more quickly and allow them to make informed decisions on the future of our planet.