A technology startup that opened a College Park location this year is giving University of Maryland students opportunities to work with data to further disease research and study other large-scale topics.
FedCentric Technologies, established in 2005, hosted an open house at its College Park branch on Knox Road on Wednesday to celebrate its January opening. The data analysis company opened this location, now its primary headquarters, because of its proximity to this university and has since hired 19 employees, 13 of them students.
“University of Maryland has fantastic students, and they have really, really good schools,” said Gerry Kolosvary, FedCentric’s president, “and we’re trying to get the best of the best of those students to work for us.”
Though the company is small, with about 40 total employees, FedCentric works on a variety of research projects, using high-powered computers to analyze data in nontraditional ways, Kolosvary said. In June, it partnered with the Frederick National Laboratory, part of the National Cancer Institute, to help researchers study cancer using large data sets.
“The easiest way to say it is that we enabled them, through technology, to look at data differently and find data they couldn’t otherwise find,” Kolosvary said.
Kolosvary said FedCentric helped researchers find links between genetics and the way cancer should be treated. Even if two people have the same disease, recommended treatments might vary radically because of their genetic differences, he said, and FedCentric’s data analysis can help track these differences and how they would affect treatment.
Kyle Milligan, a senior bioengineering major who began working for FedCentric this semester, said he’s investigating connections between the Zika virus and microcephaly with an interdisciplinary team by sifting through data and reviewing literature.
“A lot of people have been reporting that there is a link,” he said. “But we don’t actually know that for certain; we’re just trying to be safe rather than sorry.”
The company offers students a chance to look at relevant issues like these and also gives them experience in other marketable topics such as genomics, cybersecurity and fraud, waste and abuse, said Steve Heibein, vice president of engineering at FedCentric.
The company opened a location in College Park in connection with a government program to vitalize businesses in Historically Underutilized Business Zones, Kolosvary said.
Kolosvary said small companies like FedCentric give students hands-on access to advanced technology like supercomputers, which they might not be able to use starting out at a larger business.
Nicholas Rossomando, a senior aerospace engineering major, said he worked at FedCentric last summer and is considering working for the company full time after he graduates this semester.
“The opportunity to work for a small company is something that a lot of students overlook,” he said. “I got to work for a small company where I knew everyone. I knew who to go to for my questions.”
In the future, however, Rossomando said he sees himself working for a larger employer that is more related to aerospace engineering, such as NASA.
“Unfortunately, that small-company feel is something that I’m probably going to lose,” he said. “Which makes my time here all the more important to me.”
