Maryland Muscle Award
Visual Analytics, Inc.


Visual Analytics, the developer of VisuaLinks, a state of the art graphical link-analysis tool, is the winner of the first Maryland Muscle Award. The award acknowledges a Maryland-based company for its specific technology product or service used to combat the war on terrorism.

VisuaLinks is the first commercial tool of its kind for supporting advanced data mining. It uses visualization, link analysis, cluster displays, and interactive graphics to help expose the patterns and trends hidden in the data providing users with Total Information Awareness.

Founded in 1998, Visual Analytics, Inc. (VAI) is a privately held company based in Poolesville. VAI has created a suite of advanced tools called Data Clarity, which includes VisuaLinks and the Digital Information Gateway, which are used to manipulate, structure, and present data for analysis.

VisuaLinks is being used at a variety of government, defense, law enforcement and commercial organizations to help track and apprehend terrorists, money-launderers, narcotics dealers and other criminal elements.

The tragedies of 9/11 put VAI's technology in the forefront in helping the war on terrorism.

"Once 9/11 happened, people really wanted to find the bad guy and that is when they looked for the best tool on the market. VisuaLinks was and still remains the best," said David O'Connor, Chief Technical Officer, President and Founder of VAI.

VAI discovered that there was a technological gap in sharing large-scale distributed analysis and worked to solve that.

"We are seeking partnerships with software vendors to compliment our technology and are building relationships and working with larger integrators, including international groups, because terrorism isn't a local problem and neither is crime," O'Connor said.