W5170124C0020
Definitive Contract
Overview
Government Description
Monthly Status Report
Awardee
Awarding / Funding Agency
Place of Performance
El Segundo, CA 90245 United States
Pricing
Fixed Price
Set Aside
Small Business Set Aside - Total (SBA)
Extent Competed
Full And Open Competition After Exclusion Of Sources
Related Opportunity
None
Inferlink was awarded
Definitive Contract W5170124C0020 (W51701-24-C-0020)
for Monthly Status Report
worth up to $250,000
by the Department of the Army
in January 2024.
The contract
has a duration of 6 months and
was awarded
with a Small Business Total set aside
with
NAICS 541715 and
PSC AC12
via direct negotiation acquisition procedures with 46 bids received.
SBIR Details
Research Type
Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR) Phase I
Title
Adaptive Translation Engine for Low Resource Languages
Abstract
The Indo-Pacific region boasts immense linguistic diversity. However, many of these languages lack support from commercial translation services, with NLP advances primarily focused on languages from affluent societies. Notably, most commercial services perform high-level analyses post-translation, as opposed to the original language. In collaboration with USC s Information Sciences Institution (ISI), the goal is to use and extend the Massively Multilingual Neural Machine Translation (NMT) system to cater to low-resource languages in the Indo-Pacific region. This NMT system, developed previously by the ISI team with DARPA funding, offers translation capabilities for over six hundred languages into English. In this project we propose to: 1) Deploy the NMT model for many-to-English multilingual translation for low-resource languages; 2) Fine-tune the NMT model for two specific languages: Tok Pisin (TPI) and Buginese (BUG) using limited training data. Improvements will be assessed by comparing BLEU scores; 3) Develop a web-based user interface to allow users to adapt the parent model for any low-resource language, showcasing its stackability. The research team comprises leading figures in AI and NLP, with vast experience in government and commercial projects. InferLink, the research firm, has a strong track record of turning SBIR research into commercial technology, having spawned several startups from government-funded tech in recent years. Our team members from ISI have a great deal of published research, as well as commercial and open source products in the areas related to this proposal, including machine translation, multilingualism, and NLP in general.
Research Objective
The goal of phase I is to establish the technical merit, feasibility, and commercial potential of proposed R&D efforts and determine the quality of performance of the small business awardee organization.
Topic Code
A234-021
Agency Tracking Number
A234-021-1186
Solicitation Number
23.4
Contact
Jeffrey Micher
Status
(Closed)
Last Modified 1/10/25
Period of Performance
1/24/24
Start Date
7/24/24
Current End Date
7/24/24
Potential End Date
Obligations
$250.0K
Total Obligated
$250.0K
Current Award
$250.0K
Potential Award
Award Hierarchy
Definitive Contract
W5170124C0020
Subcontracts
Activity Timeline
People
Suggested agency contacts for W5170124C0020
Competition
Number of Bidders
46
Solicitation Procedures
Negotiated Proposal/Quote
Evaluated Preference
None
Commercial Item Acquisition
Commercial Item Procedures Not Used
Simplified Procedures for Commercial Items
No
Other Categorizations
Subcontracting Plan
Plan Not Required
Cost Accounting Standards
Exempt
Business Size Determination
Small Business
Defense Program
None
DoD Claimant Code
None
IT Commercial Item Category
Not Applicable
Awardee UEI
M8KCZYW54M17
Awardee CAGE
67J74
Agency Detail
Awarding Office
W51701 W27P USA ACQ SPT CTR
Funding Office
W51701
Created By
chelsea.v.campbell2.civ@army.mil
Last Modified By
dod_closeout
Approved By
gwen.e.meadows.civ@army.mil
Legislative
Legislative Mandates
None Applicable
Performance District
CA-36
Senators
Dianne Feinstein
Alejandro Padilla
Alejandro Padilla
Representative
Ted Lieu
Modified: 1/10/25