CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Science Foundation has awarded $8 million to Raytheon BBN Technologies to continue the redesign of the Internet. The foundation-funded Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI), a collaborative community of scientists from around the world, is working to meet the performance, security, and agility demands of new and emerging technologies online.

Under the new award, Raytheon BBN Technologies will oversee expansion of the GENI platform for continued advances in education, medicine, network research and public safety.

"GENI is a tremendous success, surpassing its original goals," said Mark Berman, GENI project director at Raytheon. "Today, GENI is helping to fundamentally change the way in which the world gathers and shares information."

GENI is an online laboratory for networking and distributed systems research. Since 2007, Raytheon BBN Technologies has operated the GENI Project Office under foundation sponsorship, providing system engineering and project management expertise, which has led to explosive growth in education and research activities on the GENI platform.

In eight years, GENI has grown from a notion that scientists could design a better Internet to a collaborative community that spans 6,500 researchers from more than 180 universities in 30 countries. It has enabled new applications in a broad range of areas, including:


    --  Geographically dispersed, computer-intensive education
    --  First responder communications
    --  Storm tracking
    --  High-speed, big data collaboration for city planners and officials
    --  Traffic and accident monitoring and response
    --  Personalized medicine

Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., Raytheon BBN Technologies is a wholly owned subsidiary of Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN).

About Raytheon
Raytheon Company, with 2015 sales of $23 billion and 61,000 employees, is a technology and innovation leader specializing in defense, civil government and cybersecurity solutions. With a history of innovation spanning 94 years, Raytheon provides state-of-the-art electronics, mission systems integration, C5I(TM) products and services, sensing, effects, and mission support for customers in more than 80 countries. Raytheon is headquartered in Waltham, Mass. Visit us at www.raytheon.com and follow us on Twitter @Raytheon.

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SOURCE Raytheon Company