Ten research projects will receive a total of $112.4 million over three years as part of the Department of Energy’s Biopreparedness Research Virtual Environment initiative.

This year’s awardees are slated to concentrate their studies on pathogen and anti-pathogen materials, the combined use of X-ray and in-silico technology for biopreparedness, data-driven population health surveillance and neutron protein crystallography, DOE announced Thursday.

The projects will be led by DOE’s national laboratories, including Los Alamos, Pacific Northwest, Lawrence Berkeley, Brookhaven, Oak Ridge and SLAC National Acceleratory Laboratory. They will collaborate with other research institutions and universities, including minority serving institutions and historically black colleges.

“These advances will complement research efforts associated with other federal agencies and will be broadly applicable to understanding plant pathogens of crops that are central to DOE’s bioenergy program, as well as other biological systems,” said Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, director of the DOE’s Office of Science.

Radha Iyengar Plumb, deputy undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, said the Department of Defense is utilizing its acquisition tools and authorities to advance the delivery of capabilities to the warfighter and stay ahead of China’s whole-of-nation approach, DOD reported Thursday.

“To counter China’s whole-of-nation approach, what we need to do is what only the American system can do, which is let industry iterate and develop while we in the government create the conditions to rapidly scale those key technologies — that’s the secret sauce,” Plumb said.

She highlighted the Competitive Advantage Pathfinders initiative, which aims to overcome bureaucratic and cultural barriers to delivering capability at scale to warfighters.

“We identify high-tech-ready capabilities that meet a warfighter[‘s] need, and then, we see where the sticking points are when we try to just rapidly push it to scale,” Plumb said. “We develop a solution for that problem and keep going and solve the next issue and the next issue and the next issue.”

DOD is also working to improve the integration of emerging technologies to address current and future requirements of the joint force by setting up an acquisition integration interoperability team within the acquisition and sustainment office to align service-specific systems acquisition strategies.

Moreover, the Pentagon is building its acquisition workforce through programs like the Defense Civilian Training Course.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., and Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., have introduced legislation meant to prevent government shutdowns and alleviate their impact on federal employees, government contractors and the U.S. public.

The End Shutdowns Act would initiate an automatic continuing resolution if no full-year appropriations bill is passed by Oct. 1 and prohibit consideration of other legislation in the Senate during a lapse in appropriations, Kaine’s office said Wednesday.

“Government shutdowns have disastrous consequences for federal employees and government contractors and slow down critical government services that millions of Americans rely on like getting replacement Social Security cards and food inspections. But politicians continue to use or threaten to use government shutdowns as a negotiating tactic,” Kaine said.

Beyer added that shutting down the government would cause “lasting damage to our economy” and uncertainty for civil servants and their families.

Unanet’s annual GAUGE Report has illuminated “growing optimism” within the government contracting community.

Created in collaboration with CohnReznick LLP, this 7th iteration of the report focused on the impact of accurate forecasting on business success, Unanet announced from its Dulles, Virginia headquarters on Thursday.

“The GAUGE Report gives our industry unique insights into what keeps GovCons up at night, and increasingly we’re finding they need better predictions about the future so they can plan how and where to deploy their resources, talent and energy,” explained Unanet Vice President of GovCon Strategy Kim Koster, who co-authored the report and is also one of Executive Mosaic’s GovCon Experts.

This year, the report found that 72 percent of respondents felt positively about the current GovCon business landscape, an increase from the previous year. Complementing this figure is the significant number of firms that experienced growth, which was reported by 70 percent of respondents. More than one third of respondents noted expansion through mergers and acquisitions as a major focus area for their companies.

To leverage these trends, GovCon organizations are looking to improve their resource management and forecasting capabilities, the report found. One way they are doing so is by implementing a centralized project management office model.

Koster said these findings demonstrate that project-based enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management tools that promote compliance, security and advanced accounting can boost business performance for GovCon organizations.

“We can see the improvements GovCons reap, and the wins they achieve, after implementing modern technology tools,” she said.

Unanet is sponsoring GovCon Wire’s Fireside Chat With the DCMA on Nov. 1. During the event, Koster will come together with Lt. Gen. David Bassett, director of the Defense Contract Management Agency, to discuss the organization’s role in the increasingly important government contracting space. To learn more and register to attend the event, click here.