[CAnet - news] Interconnection of California-Canada networks promotes collaboration

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Internet program web site at http://www.canarie.ca/canet4/library/list.html
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 MEDIA RELEASE | JUNE 22, 2006
Canada and California forge a strategic innovation partnership

VANCOUVER June 22, 2006 -  Officials from the University of British Columbia
and the University of California have announced that a growing partnership
between California and Canadian research leaders has resulted in the
completion of a new ultra-high bandwidth connection between Canada's
national research and education network and the California state education
network.  The partnership has also defined four areas of research
collaboration for further investigation.

The second Canada-California Strategic Innovation Partnership Summit was
held on June 11-12 and was attended by over 150 representatives of
universities, government departments and the private sector from the two
jurisdictions.  The first summit was held five months ago in Los Angeles.
The initiative has been led by a bilateral steering committee consisting of
nine Vice-Presidents from Canadian and California universities. 

"This unique discussion started only last January," said Dr. John Hepburn,
Vice-President Research at the University of British Columbia and host of
the summit, "but it has already led to important achievements.  I'm
extraordinarily impressed with how far we've come so quickly." 

"It is also important to recognize," added Dr. Roberto Peccei, Vice
Chancellor for Research at the University of California Los Angeles, "that
the next steps will involve more working scientists to refine the ideas that
have been defined by the working groups at this summit.  We have identified
areas where our facilities and expertise are highly complementary, and we
need to keep working to identify specific opportunities where we can
collaborate to address some of the big issues of the day." 

The four areas of potential collaboration that the summit focused on are:
Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine; Infectious Diseases; Nanotechnology,
and; Advanced Transportation and Energy. Three overarching issues were also
addressed:  Information Technology and Broadband; Highly Qualified Human
Resources, and; Venture Capital.  

The shared vision behind the strategic partnership was articulated in
keynote addresses by Dr. Robert Dynes, President of the University of
California, himself a Canadian, and Dr. Arthur Carty, National Science
Advisor in Ottawa.  In their addresses they emphasized the global nature of
research challenges and the need for universities the world over to find
innovative ways to work together and with the private sector. 

 "The nature of research and the role of universities in society have both
changed substantially over recent decades," said Dr. Dynes.  "Collaborative
partnerships and problem-oriented research undertakings of the sort that we
have been discussing during these two summits are the way of the future for
all of us."

The most specific challenge to the participants arising from the January
summit was to establish a new ultra-high bandwidth connection between
Canada's national research network, run by CANARIE, and CENIC, the
California state education network that provides services to all the
campuses of the University of California, USC, Stanford, and Caltech, as
well as those of the California State University.  These new optical
connections are not shared like the traditional Internet, but rather can
deliver one or 10 gigabits/sec to an individual researcher. The new "optical
overlay" to today's shared Internet provides a novel infrastructure seen as
vital to the collaborative efforts being discussed at the summit. 

The first proof-of-principle demonstration of the CANARIE/CENIC
interconnection was successfully carried out last week.  When completed,
this Canadian -California "superhighway" for data will permit individual
research projects to have dedicated capacity to support enormous streams of
data transfer that would overwhelm a conventional shared network like the
Internet. 

The two institutions that were connected in last week's test were Canada's
Communications Research Centre (CRC) in Ottawa and the UC San Diego's
division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information
Technology (Calit2). This test was the first step toward CRC becoming the
first Canadian partner of the U.S. National Science Foundation's "OptIPuter"
computer science research project (www.optiputer.net). 

Both CRC and Calit2 will terminate their new gigabit optical channel with an
OptIPortal, a high resolution tiled display wall, driven by a graphics
cluster build from commodity PCs. The large size and high resolution of such
an environment supports collaborative interaction among the participants at
both ends of the connection, whether the images being shared are large-scale
datasets or high definition TV streams.  The interactive "collaboratory"
formed between Calit2 and CRC would not be possible without the new optical
network. It also uses a new network management capability, developed as part
of a CANARIE research program, called "User Controlled LightPath", or UCLP,
to establish the connection. 

The interest of CRC in collaborating with Calit2 on the OptIPuter project
was based partly on its own mission to explore innovative broadband
applications, in particular those using UCLP.  It was also based on the
interest of researchers at Carleton University's Immersive Multimedia Studio
with whom they have partnered to develop an application focusing on
collaborative architectural design.

Other applications of the new network that were discussed at the summit
included collaboration between brain imaging researchers at McGill's
Neurological Institute and colleagues at UCSD's National Center for
Microscopy and Imaging Research, the participation of researchers at Ryerson
University in Toronto in the Calit2 CineGrid project that involves the live
streaming of next-generation digital cinema, and the HP Labs data centre
project at the University of Calgary.   

Participants at the summit saw these initial projects as important
demonstrations of how research collaboration in the other areas discussed at
the summit, such as nanotechnology, infectious diseases, and stem cell
research, can be enabled by new networking and information technologies.


To read this release in French, visit
http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/ubcnews 

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BACKGROUNDER

About CANARIE and CA*net 4

CANARIE is Canada's advanced Internet organization, a not-for-profit
corporation funded by Industry Canada to facilitate the development and use
of next-generation research networks and the applications and services that
run on them. CANARIE promotes collaboration among key sectors and partners
with innovators around the world, and in so doing stimulates innovation and
growth and helps to deliver social, cultural, and economic benefits to all
Canadians. CAnet 4, Canada's national research and education network, is
developed and operated by CANARIE. CANARIE positions Canada as the global
leader in advanced networking, and is supported by its members, project
partners, and the Government of Canada. For more information, visit
www.canarie.ca

About Calit2

The California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology,
a partnership between UC San Diego and UC Irvine, houses more than 1,000
researchers organized around more than 50 projects on the future of
telecommunications and information technology and how these technologies
will transform a range of applications important to the economy and
citizens' quality of life. www.calit2.net 

About CRC 

The Communications Research Centre Canada (CRC), an agency of Industry
Canada, is the Canadian government's primary laboratory for research and
development (R&D) in advanced telecommunications. Their R&D is used for
public policy purposes and to strengthen the Canadian economy through
technology and knowledge transfer. CRC specializes in taking an
interdisciplinary approach to longer-term R&D in wireless systems, radio
fundamentals, communication networks, photonics and interactive multimedia.
Further details about CRC are available at www.crc.ca.  
 
About CENIC

California's education and research communities leverage their networking
resources under the umbrella of a nonprofit corporation known as CENIC, the
Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, in order to
obtain cost-effective, high-bandwidth networking to support their missions
and answer the needs of their faculty, staff, and students.  CENIC designs,
implements, and operates CalREN, the California Research and Education
Network, a high-bandwidth, high-capacity Internet network specially designed
to meet the unique requirements of these communities, and to which the vast
majority of the state's K-20 educational institutions are connected.  In
order to facilitate collaboration in education and research, CENIC also
provides connectivity to non-California institutions and industry research
organizations with which CENIC's Associate researchers and educators are
engaged.  CENIC is governed by its member institutions.  Representatives
from these institutions also donate expertise through their participation in
various committees designed to ensure that CENIC is managed effectively and
efficiently, and to support the continued evolution of the network as
technology advances.  To learn more, visit www.cenic.org

About the University of British Columbia
The University of British Columbia is one of Canada's largest and most
prestigious public research and teaching institutions. Located in the
Pacific Rim gateway of Vancouver, one of the world's great cities, and in
the Interior city of Kelowna, UBC is a global centre of research and
learning. It offers more than 45,000 students a range of innovative
undergraduate, graduate and professional programs in the arts, sciences,
medicine, law, commerce and other faculties. 

UBC is consistently ranked among the world's 40 best universities, one of
only two Canadian universities in this category. It is ranked within the top
10 North American universities, and first among Canadian universities, in
terms of the number of U.S. life sciences patents and the quality of
activity generated from those patents, including spin-off company creation.
Learn more at www.ubc.ca.
 

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These news items and comments are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect
those  of the CANARIE board or management.



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