Author: Matt Loff

Visionist has been awarded a five-year, single award $200m+ prime contract from the Department of Defense, supporting the development of boutique capabilities to enable cyber mission operations. This work focuses on software engineering and development, integration and testing, systems administration, and operational/lifecycle support.

“We are honored the Government selected Visionist and our team to deliver cyber expertise to such a broad array of tasks” said Chris Berry, President of Visionist. “Visionist has built a reputation for improving intelligence analysis by integrating software and data science at the speed of today’s fast moving mission areas. We are committed to bringing these same capabilities and more in support of DoD’s most critical cyber missions.”

The Visionist team will initially bring a cadre of 50+ highly technical software professionals from across industry to support cyber capability development and deliver new mission enhancing innovations. Additional technical services are expected to be added over the next year.

We are excited to announce that Visionist has once again been recognized as a Baltimore Sun Top Workplace for the 9th consecutive year! This award is particularly meaningful to us as it is solely based on feedback provided by our team.

At Visionist, our team continues to be our top priority and their feedback is the cornerstone to our success. We actively welcome and prioritize their feedback as a way for continuous improvement and our ongoing mission is to have an inclusive and collaborative environment where our team can succeed and grow in their careers.

As we reflect on 2023, we attribute our success to the dedication and hard work of our amazing team. To our exceptional employee-owners, we extend a heartfelt thank you for your unwavering commitment to Visionist that continues to make us a top workplace, year after year. Congrats team!

Visionist was awarded a four-year, single award $70m prime contract from the Department of Defense, to develop and support a voice-based processing application for both national and tactical intelligence missions. This contract modernizes a currently deployed system, establishing a next-generation software and hardware capability at hundreds of sites worldwide. Modernization activities include technology refresh, a modernized user interface, streamlined user workflows, improved enrichments and integration of state-of-the-art voice analytics.

“We are excited to support the development and deployment of a modernized system” said Chris Berry, President of Visionist. “Visionist is committed to improving intelligence analysis by integrating software and data analytics in response to our war fighter’s needs. By leveraging our team’s technical, engineering and software expertise, our nation’s intelligence analysts and military will be able to keep pace with the ever-growing amount of data collected.”

The Visionist team will initially bring a cadre of 30+ highly technical professionals from across industry to drive analytic discovery and support application development. Additional technical services are expected to be added over the next two years.

About Visionist

Headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, Visionist specializes in making sense of large and complex data sets. Their unique and modern analytic solutions help customers better analyze, visualize and take action on their data. Since 2010, Visionist has been a trusted partner to several governmental agencies, helping them tackle their most challenging problems in Cyber, Signals and Open Source Intelligence.

Visionist has been awarded a five-year, single award $190M prime contract from the Department of Defense, supporting essential mission requirements in the Computer Network Operations (CNO) area. This work includes a wide array of professional and technical services, including systems engineering, software engineering and development, data science, integration, communications support, and operational/lifecycle support.

“We are honored the Government selected Visionist and our team to deliver CNO expertise to such a broad array of tasks” said Chris Berry, President of Visionist. “Visionist has built a reputation for improving intelligence analysis by integrating software and data science at the speed of today’s fast moving mission areas. We are committed to bringing these same capabilities and more in support of DoD’s most critical cyber missions.”

The Visionist team will initially bring a cadre of 60 highly technical professionals and capabilities from across industry to support Computer Network Operations. Additional technical services are expected to be added over the next two years.

About Visionist
Headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, Visionist specializes in making sense of large and complex data sets. Their unique and modern analytic solutions help customers better analyze, visualize and take action on their data. Since 2010, Visionist has been a trusted partner to several governmental agencies, helping them tackle their most challenging problems in Cyber, Signals and Open Source Intelligence.

Visionist is excited to announce that we have been named a Baltimore Sun Top Workplace for the 7^th year in a row. We’re proud to receive this recognition each year; this award is especially meaningful to us because the designation isn’t decided by judges, or editors – it’s based on feedback from our team. Thank you to our amazing, hardworking employees for your dedication and contributions that make Visionist a top workplace!

In 2020, Visionist broadened our reimbursement benefit to better fit the needs of our employees, adding fitness expenses, tech purchases, or the option of doubling their donation to an approved charity (Visionist makes a matching contribution).

Thank to our generous employees, Visionist recently made matching contributions to The Maryland Food Bank, St. Jude Children’s Research, The Baltimore Station, Samaritan’s Purse International Relief, and the Gary Sinise Foundation.

Like most benefits at Visionist, our charity and community support was initiated and shaped by our employees. We take great pride in having a team that generously devotes their time, energy, and dollars to those who are less fortunate.

Visionist is a proud sponsor of Technica 2020, the world’s largest all women and nonbinary hackathon. We also fielded a mentorship team for the event to provide tech guidance to the participants.

Thanks to Kelsey Campbell, Ruth Goulding, Matt Loff, and Greg Van Ginkel for volunteering their time to mentor at the event! The Technica teams we mentored were incredibly productive in such a short time – links to their projects are featured below:

• Night of the Living Skulls – https://devpost.com/software/night-of-the-living-skulls
• Tree Tunes – https://devpost.com/software/tree-tunes
• Salam – https://devpost.com/software/salam-ql6ik0

For more information regarding the event and projects from other teams, check out: https://technica2020.devpost.com/project-gallery

Visionist was awarded a 5-year competitive task order under an existing prime contract to perform User Experience (UX) design, workflow analysis, and product strategy.

Congratulations to our team on the win!

Visionist Data Scientist Adam Sonty participated in an analytics challenge during the virtual 2020 Sounders FC Soccer Analytics Conference last month.

The Seattle Sounders challenged analytics enthusiasts to use data visualization to tell a story and deliver insights that help decision-making processes of key stakeholders at the club. Adam showed how defensive positioning can impact goal-scoring opportunity, using player-tracking data of attacking sequences by Liverpool FC to create a statistic called “goal control” that quantifies the amount of the goal that a player controls. His solution visualizes how defensive players obstruct attackers’ view of the goal. Statistics like goal control can lead to more meaningful metrics to describe the quality of a shot.

Adam finished in the top 4 of the competition – congratulations Adam!

Visionists have stepped up to support our community during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our team volunteered their time to create a web application that helps get meals to families in need in Howard County, Maryland.

Visionist engineer Joe Shaw discovered families were not taking advantage of the free meals being provided by Howard County Schools because they lack reliable transportation. School volunteers created a sign-up sheet with Google Forms to manually pair families-in-need with volunteers who would then deliver the food. The spreadsheet solution did not scale, so Joe brainstormed a more robust solution to streamline the sign-up and delivery process.

In less than a week, a group of Visionists built and deployed Grab and Go HoCo, an app that presents delivery volunteers a map of locations where families need meals. Volunteers can then select homes they are able to serve. Behind the scenes, a powerful administrative interface gives coordinators the ability to generate reports required by the county.

In the first week, the site coordinated existing delivery routes for 30 families and paired up 18 new families with volunteers. It also helped recruit 32 additional volunteers to make deliveries. We’re proud of Joe and our developers for putting their efforts towards helping the community, and we’re confident that all of us can weather COVID-19 together.  Stay strong!

Visionist’s RecruitGeM software is now an approved NCAA Division I football recruiting/scouting service.

RecruitGeM builds on our DraftGeM product, analyzing statistics and identifying high school players that have true potential to succeed at the next level. Our player performance curves don’t always agree with media predictions, but results speak for themselves – RecruitGeM correctly predicted that two players rated as top pocket passers by ESPN in 2020 would have limited success in their FBS careers.

For more information on RecruitGeM, contact Visionist VP Brian Lehman – brian.lehman (at) visionistinc.com

Visionist VP Brian Lehman presented research at the 14th Annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston. Several NFL teams have expressed interest in leveraging his work – “Projecting NFL Potential from College Career Performance Curve.”

Visionist’s data science team continues to find creative ways to cross-pollinate ideas between our traditional customer domains and the sports world!

Visionist UX Designer Jim Miller presented at the North American Cartographic Information Society’s annual meeting in Tacoma, WA on October 17, 2019.

In his presentation, he discusses different user testing techniques for map designs that range from quick and crowd-sourced to long and moderated to underground and guerrilla.

[ Watch Jim’s full presentation ]

Visionist’s 2019 intern team presented their project Snack Overflow at the 3rd annual AFCEA SIPS (Summer Intern Presentation Showcase) competition.

Congratulations to our team for concluding their successful summer project with an excellent presentation!

Visionist’s Data Science team attended the International Sunbelt Social Network Conference in Montreal, Quebec, where they introduced Visionist’s social media conversation monitoring tool called TalkTracker.

The conference hosted over 600 attendees from 50 countries and offered sessions in a variety of disciplines.

Visionist’s TalkTracker presentation was part of the “Words and Networks” track, and attendees got the chance to see how dynamic word networks can be used to track a rapidly changing conversation online.

In the example shown here, TalkTracker visualizes how topics evolve before, during, and after the attempted 2016 coup in Turkey. By playing back chronological data from Twitter’s public feed in 2016, TalkTracker successfully alerts on significant trending activity before news outlets break the news of the unrest.

Visionist’s WellBearing was selected as one of three finalists in the Healthiest Communities Data Challenge presented by the Aenta Foundation and AcademyHealth.

WellBearing is an open-source, open-access visualization interface designed to reveal patterns and explore potential drivers of disparate health outcomes. The tool was built with all 3,000 U.S. counties and county equivalents in mind, enabling comparisons at national, state, and peer-group levels. Such comparisons are the result of a deliberate focus on geospatial visualization, county-level comparisons, and multivariate data overlays.

The AcademyHealth challenge sought innovative ways to leverage data from U.S. News & World Report’s Healthiest Communities rankings in order to drive better health outcomes in communities.

Our WellBearing team, made up of two data scientists, a software engineer, and a user-experience (UX) designer, embodies the Visionist commitment to excellence and transformative thinking.

A team of engineers from Visionist and our Exponential Labs Joint Venture partner Engineering Solutions Inc., won the Rapid Prototyping Event (RPE) held at US Cyber Command’s DreamPort research lab.  The event is sponsored by the Maryland Innovation & Security Institute, and had more than a dozen teams competing in the 3-day event.

The competition was focused on developing approaches to “Find the Needles in the Haystack” – automatically identifying the most important assets (needles) on a network (haystack) without any prior human knowledge.

Our team believes that combining data and technology in innovative ways can have a significant impact on wellbeing.

A team of Visionists participated in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Opioid Code-a-thon to help HHS find new ways to address the opioid crisis. Our TakeBack America solution aims to eliminate barriers to safe drug disposal by making it easier for members of the public to find disposal locations near them.

TakeBack was selected as one of three winning solutions from over 50 entries by a panel of judges from HHS, Stanford Medicine, and others. Over this past year, we continued to develop TakeBack in partnership with HHS. Google approached us to help transition TakeBack’s data into Google’s Maps and Search platforms. Today, Google’s solution has been released to the general public. We are honored that both Google and HHS saw TakeBack’s unique value and we appreciate the opportunity to collaborate with the goal of scaling up the TakeBack approach.

Read more from HHS and Google on the effort:

• Today, You Can Find Where to Dispose Drugs More Easily [HHS]
• To help fight the opioid crisis, a new tool from Maps and Search [Google]

We are proud to announce that Visionist has been recognized by The Baltimore Sun as one of the Top Workplaces in the Maryland region for the fourth year in a row!

The Top Workplaces awards are based on anonymous employee surveys, and reflect on career opportunities, culture, benefits, and work environment. While four years in a row is an achievement we are thrilled to celebrate, we continue to find new ways to make Visionist an even better place for our employees.

On Tuesday, November 13th, members of our Data Science team were invited by Google’s staff to attend Searching for Answers: Innovating for Families in the Opioid Age. This unique event brought together professionals from many fields – non-profit and Governmental organizations, medical professionals, people in long-term recovery, and representatives from technology companies including Google, Facebook, and Twitter.

Along with discussions of the challenges facing those impacted by the opioid crisis, the event featured multiple panels focused on what tech companies can do to help support the development of new tools, treatments, and solutions. Brainstorming sessions focused on generating ideas for how to scale existing solutions and disseminate accurate and helpful information to the public.

Visionst’s team had the opportunity to connect with attendees one-on-one and demonstrate TakeBack America, our winning solution from the U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services Code-a-thon. TakeBack allows the general public to easily locate sites where they can safely dispose of leftover medication, reducing opportunities for theft or abuse. It also allows public health practitioners and community planners to evaluate whether these take-back site locations are properly positioned in order to be accessible by the most at-risk communities. These interactions sparked interesting discussions about the crisis and potential collaboration opportunities to continue innovation in the sphere of healthcare.

Read more from The Center for Safe Internet Pharmacies (CSIP)

Visionist is honored to be recognized as a 2018 Blue Hen 17&43 Award recipient. Brian Lehman (Visionist Vice President and co-founder) and several of our engineers are University of Delaware Alumni.

Since 1743, the University of Delaware has established a proud tradition of leadership, innovation and entrepreneurship. The Blue Hen 17&43 builds on this tradition through the annual recognition of the 17 most promising new businesses (less than 5 years old) and the 43 fastest growing companies (5+ years old or generating revenues of more than $1MM for 3 consecutive years) founded, owned or led by UD students and alumni.

The Blue Hen 17&43 is a project of UD’s Horn Entrepreneurship and Alfred Lerner College of Business & Economics.

After Visionist’s success at the Health & Human Services Opioid Code-a-Thon in December, our team has been committed to continuing the fight against this dangerous epidemic.

We were honored to be invited to a Roundtable event on Data Sharing Policies, Data-Driven Solutions, and the Opioid Crisis co-hosted by the HHS Office of the CTO and the nonprofit Center for Open Data Enterprise (CODE). This event brought over 70 experts from government, the private sector, nonprofits, and academia together to discuss how health data is used and shared, and how this process can be improved. Recommendations compiled from the discussions detail actionable steps for data to be used more effectively to combat the opioid crisis.

In addition to being a part of these important conversations, Visionist had the chance to present TakeBack America, our winning Code-atThon solution, as a successful example of data being used to create an innovative solution. TakeBack allows the general public to easily locate sites where they can safely dispose of leftover medication reducing opportunities for theft or abuse.  Public health officials and community planners can use the tool to evaluate under-served areas and make decisions on resource allocation. Open data was an integral part of making TakeBack America a reality, and getting the chance to use it to inspire others and advocate for data sharing practices was an incredible experience.

Read more: HHS roundtable highlights priorities for applying data to the opioid crisis [FedScoop]

Visionist’s summer intern team won Best Technical Project at the 2nd annual SIPS (Summer Intern Presentation Showcase) competition sponsored by AFCEA Central Maryland.

Congratulations to our intern team on their win!

Visionist and the Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS) shared a booth at the Health Datapalooza Conference – our team demoed the Take-Back America tool, our winning solution from the HHS Opioid Code-a-Thon.

Take-Back helps people find locations near them where they can dispose of leftover prescription medications safely so dangerous and addictive drugs don’t circulate in their community. It also allows public health practitioners and community planners to evaluate whether these take-back site locations are properly positioned in order to be accessible to the most at-risk communities.

The event gave us an amazing opportunity to show and discuss our work with over 1,200 Datapalooza attendees. We received valuable feedback from practitioners and researchers who are working to make a difference in combatting the opioid epidemic.

Visionist placed first among 25 teams competing in the “Prevention” category at the Dept. of Health & Human Services Opioid Code-a-Thon. 56 teams competed in total.

Our winning solution is called TakeBack America. It allows the general public to easily locate sites where they can safely dispose of leftover medication, reducing opportunities for theft or abuse. It also allows public health practitioners and community planners to evaluate whether these take-back site locations are properly positioned in order to be accessible by the most at-risk communities.

Congratulations to the Visionist team on their achievement!

Read more on the event here: HHS announces the winners of the HHS Opioid Code-a-Thon [HHS]

We couldn’t ask for a more enthusiastic group to represent Visionist at SmartCEO Magazine’s Future50 Awards in Baltimore!

Future50 is an event that recognizes 50 of the most influential people in technology today from across key organizational roles including, but not limited to, the following categories: CEOs & executive leadership, product managers, designers and engineers.

We are proud to announce that The Baltimore Sun has named Visionist as a Top Workplace for the second year in a row. We recognize this as a reflection of our unwavering dedication to our employees, and our goal of fostering a workplace that encourages innovation.

Baltimore Sun’s anonymous employee survey covers company culture, connection, alignment, leadership, and performance.

Fortune revealed its list of the Best Small & Medium Workplaces, which ranks Visionist among the top 10 small businesses!

Fortune partners with analytics firm Great Place to Work to analyze survey feedback representing more than 30,000 U.S. employees. We’re proud that Visionist has been recognized nationally as a place with exceptional workplace, culture, and career opportunities!