Quantum Leap Innovations Inc., a cutting-edge software research and development firm located in the Delaware Technology Park with close ties to the University of Delaware, has been awarded an important contract by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory to create, develop, demonstrate and evaluate an intelligence-sharing system designed to better anticipate and preempt potential terrorist threats.

The contract was announced recently by Delaware’s Congressional delegation, which said the system will enable government agencies to more quickly and efficiently share sensitive information, allowing for faster decision-making based on better data in matters of national security.

The Quantum Leap project team will collaborate with leading scientists, technologists, software engineers and developers from across the country and in a variety of technical fields.

“In the past few years, we’ve become acutely aware that our intelligence community needs to become more cohesive,” U.S. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) says. “This project is just what the doctor ordered, and hopefully, in the end, it will provide a real solution to a very real problem.”

Biden, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, says Quantum Leap was awarded this contract “because they understand that we’ve got to get the right information to the right people at the right time in order to be safer as a nation. It’s going to start right here in Delaware because we’ve got the science and technology to do it.”

Citing Congressional action to overhaul the nation’s intelligence community after the release of the 9/11 Commission report that noted a failure among intelligence agencies to share information and link anti-terrorism efforts, U.S. Sen. Tom R. Carper (D-Del.) says the Quantum Leap project will “help correct the obvious flaws in our intelligence network and facilitate information sharing among the various agencies.”

“The threats our country faces today are not the same threats we will face in the future. To respond to these evolving threats, we have taken major steps toward improving intelligence communication, coordination and cooperation, which will address our need to adapt, respond and prevent future terrorist attacks,” U.S. Rep. Michael N. Castle (R-Del.) says.

Castle says the Quantum Leap project “will move us yet another step toward our goal by facilitating information-sharing among the various agencies that are crucial to coordinating our intelligence.”

Quantum Leap Innovations was founded in 1999 by Joseph B. Elad, president and chief executive officer, and Apperson H. Johnson, chief science officer. Both studied at UD, where Elad, EG ’82M,  received a master’s degree in chemical engineering and also studied computer science and Johnson, AS ’89M,  received a master’s degree in computer science.

“Initially, probably 100 percent of us were UD computer science people,” Elad says. “We are a true University of Delaware start-up.”

Elad had started the company in his north Wilmington home but was convinced to move to the Delaware Technology Park after a meeting with Michael Bowman, chairman of the park, which includes such other high technology tenants as the DuPont Co. and Fraunhofer USA’s Center for Molecular Biotechnology.

The Delaware Technology Park is located adjacent to the UD campus and houses the University’s Delaware Biotechnology Center.

“It was evident to me we wanted to be in the Delaware Technology Park for several reasons, but first and foremost to be close to the University,” Elad says. “We work in collaboration with many of the professors, and there is a cadre of well-trained graduate and undergraduates students who work with us as interns. It is important for us be close to the University because it is such a synergistic relationship.”

Many of the interns are staying, he says, despite strong opportunities in other high technology centers elsewhere. “About 95 percent of the students who have interned with us have stayed with Quantum Leap,” Elad says. “We believe that is because the work is exciting and the atmosphere is casual. We are doing things that are on the cutting edge of advanced software technology.”

Elad says the retention of quality interns is vital to the company and to the state, as it builds research capacity. “We are retaining an important element of intellectual capital in the state,” he says. “These bright students are choosing to stay here rather than go to Massachusetts, California or northern Virginia.”

Today, Elad says, Quantum Leap is doing the unthinkable and bringing in talent from all over the country. “We have scientists and executives moving from Silicon Valley to Newark,” he says.

The new contract is one of many competitive contracts the company has been awarded. “We are winning a lot of other competitive contracts, as well,” Elad says. “We are competing with the best in the world, and we are winning against the best because we are becoming one of the best. We are putting Newark, Del., on the map in advanced computer software and that is very exciting for me personally.”

Elad says the company has found itself in “a very special environment” with the strong support of both the Congressional delegation and the University of Delaware administration, led by President David P. Roselle.

“The University of Delaware gives a lot to us, and we give a lot back,” Elad says.

—Neil Thomas, AS ’76