UNO gets NRL grant

NEW ORLEANS – The University of New Orleans computer science department has been awarded a five-year, $663,000 research contract by the Naval Research Laboratory to develop next-generation defense mapping systems. The principal investigators on the project are Mahdi Abdelguerfi, chairman of the computer science department, and John Finigan, IT director of the department. The project builds on UNO's expertise in geospatial mapping. The project is expected to use open-source software and commodity hardware that will let the Navy process more map data faster and more cost effectively than the legacy systems, Abdelguerfi said. (Source: Times-Picayune, 11/06/13)