September 2004


At one-year mark: ORION reshapes Ontario research & education landscape

One year after becoming operational, the Ontario Research and Innovation Optical Network has already started to reshape the research and education landscape in Ontario, bringing unprecedented levels of connectivity and opening the gate to new research, scientific discoveries and innovation throughout Ontario.

Reporting to ORION’s Board of Directors this week, President/CEO Phil Baker highlighted how ORION is starting to make an impact on the province’s research and education community, by triggering a new era of collaboration, data sharing and innovation.

Some 60 institutions and organizations are now connecting to ORION, the largest and most advanced R&E network of its kind in the word. It’s fully operational in 21 cities across Ontario, with five dozen institutions already signed up, including every Ontario university, most colleges, several teaching hospitals, and a few school boards.

“A researcher or educator in Thunder Bay, Timmins or Sarnia has the same access to bandwidth and resources as a researcher in Toronto. That kind of access is a unique Ontario accomplishment.”

“ORION has already put Ontario on the map when it comes to global connectivity for research. Ontario is now the standard and we’re going to work hard to keep the lead,” said Baker.

ORION’s contribution and support to the SHARCNET distributed computing project, for example, has helped to give Ontario a truly “landmark” project that is gaining notice from research colleagues across North America. ORION has also helped the Northern Ontario School of Medicine by providing a cost effective network infrastructure that allows the school to invest more funds in research and teaching.

ORION is a driving force behind an alliance of research networks around the Great Lakes, including Quebec, Michigan and New York, moving towards a vast “grid” for research and discovery across the Great Lakes region and beyond.

These links with peer networks around the Great Lakes have “immense strategic value to Ontario,” said Baker.

While the focus of Phil Baker’s and the ORION team’s job over the last 18 months was the building and completion of the network, the focus now is on growing Ontario’s R&E family of connected users and exploiting the full capacity of ORION.

One strategic goal is to gain recognition for ORION as critical infrastructure, among policy and funding agencies, just as important as our highways and railways, and as essential as the bricks and mortar of our colleges and universities and research labs.

“Today’s new global research environment is all about connectivity and collaboration. No one public or private institution has all the leading researchers in any single field. Major scientific instruments, sensors and experimental facilities are spread throughout the world.

“Leading large-scale computation resources and data repositories are distributed in a few locations. Major global research initiatives are multi-party, collaborative, reach across borders and increasingly multidisciplinary.

“What ORION brings to Ontario is the capacity for virtual research and learning communities, or clusters, bridging public and private sector partners, and enabling traditionally separate disciplines to come together,” says Baker.

ORION is also working with Ontario’s school boards o help them identify the benefits of connecting to ORION and the growing global mesh of resources for teachers and learners available over R&E broadband networks.

The organization plans a series of briefings, events and workshops over the fall and winter, and an aggressive push to the broader R&E community.

“We’re just starting to scratch the surface of what this network can do for Ontario,” said Baker, who is devoting much of the next several months to meeting and briefing science, education and government leaders on the benefits of leveraging ORION to advance Ontario’s research, innovation, education and economic agenda.

“The goal is carving ourselves a piece of the global innovation pie. ORION gives us a roadmap to take us there,” he said.


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