The University of Virginia has received a $200,000 donation from Leidos, a national security, health and engineering solutions company, to support a wide range of collaborative research projects.

As a continued supporter of U.Va.’s Data Science Institute, Leidos’ gift supports collaborative research projects in the areas of cybersecurity, health informatics and smart grid energy analytics. The institute, which focuses on large-scale, complex data analysis, crosses disciplines and offers a unique confluence of computation, science, engineering, mathematics, statistics, commerce, social science, humanities and law, among other fields.

“The University of Virginia appreciates the gift and continued commitment from Leidos,” Don Brown, the institute’s director, said. “This investment will help us prepare the next generation of data scientists to address the broadly identified challenges in cyber security, health care and sustainable energy.”

Leidos product DigitalEdge, a cloud-based analytics tool, will also be available for use during students’ big data capstone projects. DigitalEdge is a tool that scales to accommodate analysis of huge data sets and is used to address big data challenges in the national security sector and the commercial marketplace.

“Data science and analytics has the potential to transform the explosion of information in many business areas. By using tools like DigitalEdge, student analysts can reduce the flood of data into relevant facts to support better decisions,” said Gulu Gambhir, chief technology officer at Leidos and university executive sponsor. “Leidos welcomes the opportunity to continue our research collaborations with the faculty and students of University of Virginia.”

The gift also supports a technology leadership program, a National Defense and Intelligence conference and cyber research projects at the Broadband Wireless Access and Applications Center.