ORION Newsletter

January / February 2005

ORION Research support groups explored
Members of ORION’s Technical Advisory Committee are now investigating the feasibility of forming working groups made up of researchers and IT staff from user member institutions to help identify opportunities for collaboration across ORION. The process would also help IT departments identify collaborative activities and their requirements, said Committee Chair Sam Mokbel, ORION’s Senior Director of Engineering and Operations. The Committee, which met in December, agreed to submit preliminary reports as early as March, identifying the opportunities for collaboration in several areas, including shared backup and disaster recovery; Federated Identity Management; Certificate Authority; e-Learning and learning module repositories; videoconferencing, and webcasting. The committee represents a large cross section of Ontario post-secondary institutions top IT and networking managers. Mokbel expects the group’s contribution will accelerate the development of new applications and innovative uses of the network.

Bell partners with McMaster on telerobotics
McMaster has announced a partnership with Bell Canada to undertake research in telerobotics surgery and telemedicine. Bell University Laboratories will contribute $450,000 over three years to McMaster to support the creation of an integrated systems laboratory, part of the proposed McMaster School of BioMedical Engineering. "Bell’s networking expertise, its interest in telerobotic surgery and its ongoing investment in emerging technologies make it an outstanding partner in biomedical engineering applications at McMaster University," said Peter George, President and Vice-Chancellor, McMaster University. This was the second recent major investment for its new School of BioMedical Engineering. MDA, the company that developed the famous Canadarm used in space by NASA, provided $450,000 for a medical robotics laboratory. "Our engineering faculty welcomes the opportunity to collaborate with Bell Canada through Bell University Laboratories," said Mo Elbestawi, dean of engineering. "Bell is a leader. Their highly sophisticated technology has paved the way for a revolutionary new generation of networks with significant potential application in the field of biomedical engineering." Bell has already contributed $300,000 to McMaster’s St. Joseph's Healthcare Centre. The donation supports the Hospital's advanced surgical communication network in Canada. Telementoring, telerobotics assisted surgery, and teleradiology are all procedures that operate over this surgical grade network. Learn more at www.eng.mcmaster.ca/news/newsitems/bell.htm

Coup for Canada - Cornell Prof to head UW department
Thomas F. Coleman, director of the Cornell Theory Center (CTC) and professor of computer science and applied mathematics at Cornell University will become the Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Waterloo, effective July 1, 2005. Prof. Coleman will be leading a college of mathematical sciences, comprised of five departments-computer science, applied mathematics, statistics, combinatorics and optimization, and pure mathematics-and about 200 faculty members. "This is a coup for Canada and UW," said Provost Amit Chakma. "Tom Coleman's appointment as our new dean of mathematics is consistent with our overall strategy to recruit the very best." Coleman is one of Waterloo's own, receiving his PhD from UW in 1979. He is currently on the editorial board of numerous professional journals. He is the author of two books on computational mathematics, the editor of four proceedings, and has published more than 60 journal articles in the areas of optimization, automatic differentiation, parallel computing, and computational finance. He is also a research consultant for a number of finance-related companies and efforts based in New York, Boston, Seoul, Singapore, and Tokyo.

Associate Dean of Research at NOSM
A biomedical research scientist specializing in disorders of the nervous system has been appointed Associate Dean of Research at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine. Dr. Gregory Ross, currently researching the influence of environmental factors on brain disease, has study sites throughout Ontario and in other regions of Canada. He holds several grants to support his research, including awards from the ALS Society of Canada, the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario. The School’s announcement came with the appointment of three Division Heads. They include Dr. Garry Ferroni as Head of the Medical Sciences Division and Professor of Medical Microbiology, Dr. Tim Zmijowskyj as Head of the Division of Clinical and Associate Professor of Family Medicine, and Dr. Nancy Lightfoot, who has recently joined NOMS as Head of Human Sciences. NOMS is a joint venture of Lakehead and Laurentian Universities. With main campuses in Thunder Bay and Sudbury, the school will have multiple teaching and research sites distributed in large and small communities across Northern Ontario.

Great Leap Forward - China gunning for lead
China has officially launched the next generation of its China Education and Research Network, and claims to be operating the biggest network in the world, as well as the first network based entirely on IPv6 technology. "We were a learner and follower in the development of the first generation Internet, but we have caught up with world's leaders in the next-generation Internet, become a first mover, and won respect and attention from the international community," said Wu Jianping, director of the expert committee of the China Education and Research Network. CERNET2 is among the largest next-generation Internet networks in operation in the world, connecting 25 universities in 20 cities, with plans to expand to 100 universities soon. The speed in the backbone network reaches 2.5 to 10 gigabits per second and connects the universities at a speed of 1 to 10 gigabits per second. A recent report in China Daily notes a trial on CERNET2 between Beijing and Tianjin on December 7 achieved a speed of 40 gigabits per second. CERNET2 is the first network based on pure Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) technology, one major characteristic between the current Internet and the next-generation Internet. Learn more at this link: http://big5.china.com.cn/english/2004/May/94683.htm

NCIT expands research portfolio
Ottawa’s National Capital Institute of Telecommunications (NCIT) is now administering the Ontario Research Network for Electronic Commerce (ORNEC) - a leader in inter-disciplinary E-Commerce research and training. This expands NCIT’s research focus and is a natural fit to the NCIT as a meeting point for universities, government and industry to leverage their strengths through collaborative research and commercialization, says NCIT President Dr. Robert Crawhall. ORNEC first came together when the universities of Ottawa, McMaster, Carleton, and Queen's joined with corporate partners to establish ORNEC as the focal point and driving force for electronic commerce research in Ontario, Canada, and internationally. NCIT also reports it has completed major upgrades of NCIT*net2, linking additional laboratories at both the University of Ottawa and Carleton University sites. NCIT*net2 is connected through the network node at the Network Computing and Control Technologies (NCCT) Research Laboratory of the University of Ottawa to the Ottawa Regional Area Network (OttawaRAN) and ORION. NCCT is the central control node of the whole NCIT network, undertaking leading research and experiments related to next generation networks and services. ORION provides the conduit to CA*net 4 and international research networks. See www.ocri.ca/email_broadcasts/ncit_news_v2_2004.html

HPCS2005 - Call for fast abstracts
SHARCNET is inviting fast abstracts for the International Symposium on High Performance Computing Systems and Applications – HPCS 2005 at the University of Guelph May 15-18, 2005. HPC-driven research is a rapidly evolving enterprise and thus there is often a need to communicate new, perhaps incomplete ideas or examples of innovative and non-traditional uses of HPC. To address this need, HPCS 2005 is introducing the concept of "Short Communications" at this year's symposium - a one to two page presentation of an idea or research project in progress. The communications are welcome for all conference topics. They will be lightly refereed and will appear on the conference website. The goal is to create birds-of-a-feather sessions targeting specific fields where researchers can compare methods, tools, recent results and experiences, and gain immediate feedback from their peers. The submission deadline is March 6. To register, or find out more, visit www.sharcnet.ca/events/hpcs2005.

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