SURA Information Technology Steering Committee

Below are Resources for the discussion which will take place at the SURA CIO Meeting, August 19, 2003. Please review the items under each topic in advance of the meeting. 

Meeting agenda (html) or download the Word document

SURA News August 2003 

SURA CIO Topics:

1. Intra and Inter-regional Connectivity

   • Regional GigaPoPs:

     • Gulf Central Gigapop (AL)

     • MAX (MD, VA, DC)

     • SOX (MA)

     • NCGigaNet (NC)

     • NetWork Virginia (VA)

     • Texas Gigapop

     • OneNet (OK)

     • AMPATH (FL)
        

2. National Light Rail: http://www.getlight.net/

   • Basic presentation (J. Brown)- "Towards a National Light Rail"  (ppt - 939Kb)

   • Outcomes of NLR Meeting, May 2003 (pdf - 137Kb)

   • Mid-Atlantic Terascale Partnership (MATP) - Last mile NLR PoP for MD, VA, DC

   • Net@EDU 2003 Presentations:

     • Fiberco: A Holding Company for National & Regional Fiber Initiatives - Steve Corbato
     • USA Waves - Don Riley, U of Maryland, College Park
     • National Light Rail (NLR) - Tom West, CENIC

    

3. AT&T partnership/networking infrastructure: AT&T President of Sales, Chris Rooney, addressed the SURA Board of Trustees on April 29, 2003. Mr. Rooney provided an overview of a cooperative agreement between SURA and AT&T that would provide SURA with no-cost leases of dark fiber and donated equipment to support SURA's participation in the development of a new generation of regional and national advanced optical networks. SURA continues to work closely Geographic Network Affiliates International (Geo) to finalize this cooperative agreement.
   
   NOTE: Additional material about the AT&T agreement will be sent to participants in a separate email.
    

   • SURA Architecture WG White Paper on infrastructure (344 Kb - pdf)
      

4. SURA Coastal Ocean Observing and Prediction Program (SCOOP):

   • SURA Coastal main page: http://www.sura.org/coastal/main.html

   • SCOOP: http://www.skio.peachnet.edu/research/scoop/index.php

   • http://comps.marine.usf.edu/SCOOP/ (map with logos)

   • Don Riley's presentation on SCOOP 7/31/03 (pdf - 5.7MB)

   • From the August ’01 Workshop, Next Steps included “Communications infrastructure to support real-time data acquisition.”

    

5. SURA BioGrid: http://www.ncbiogrid.org

   • NIH Funding (2003 YTD)for SURA Region (Excel - 116Kb ) totals $1,637,863,453.
     This document also contains Institution rankings for NIH funding in 2002.

   • NC Biogrid Overview PPT (June 13, 2003)

   • 05-Jun-03: Deployed NMI (NSF Middleware Initiative) 3.0 with Globus Toolkit Version 2.2.4 on the Testbed.

   • NC BioGrid Testbed takes advantage of the OC-48 core of NCREN, which interconnects the R-1 Triangle universities and MCNC. The NC BioGrid servers are (or will be shortly in some cases) connected to the NCREN network via Gigabit Ethernet.

   • BioGrid application: Protein Information Resource (PIR), which will be part of UniProt

   • CASC White Paper on Biomedical Research (pdf - 297Kb)
      

6. High Energy Physics/J-Lab

   • Jefferson Lab home page: http://www.jlab.org/
      

7. International Programs/Opportunities at SURA schools

   • Florida International University - AMPATH (Access to Mexico Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Puerto Rico)

   • Texas A&M University - Engineering program in Qatar, Mexico, France, Germany

   • Georgetown University signs agreement with Mexican government

   • Virginia Tech Integrated Pest Management Collaborative Research Support Program, funded by USAID

   • Duke University Center for International Development

   • GWU Center for International Science and Technology
      

   • CERN - High Energy Physics: CMS Institutions and members includes 8 SURA institutions; 36 countries
     (http://www.cern.ch )

   • Internet2 International Partners

   • Internet Educational Equal Access Foundation (IEEAF)
      

8. Information Assurance and Network Security

   • Proposal from Joy Hughes, GMU:  Promoting Research Based Security Collaborations in SURA Institutions (Word doc -  28Kb)
      

9. Minority Serving Institutions (MSI) Technology Infrastructure and Development

   • Overveiw presentation (G. Crane) - National R&E Optical Network (pdf - 388kb)
      

10. Middleware - NMI

    • The NMI Testbed Web site http://www.nsf-middleware.org.

    • Most recent NMI update (M.F. Yafchak) (79 Kb - Word doc)

    • Plans are underway for the Deploying an Enterprise Directory and Directory-Enabled Applications workshop in August 2003, under SURA's PACS grant with the University of Kentucky

    • NMI-Enterprise and Desktop Integration Technologies (NMI-EDIT)

    • InCommon:  InCommon is a federation of organizations interested in providing a framework for trust in support of research and education. InCommon intends to facilitate the development of understandings and agreements among its participants that  permit network-based delivery of academic goods and services. It is expected that InCommon will evolve significantly as those involved better understand the requirements and capabilities for trust relationships in support of their inter-organizational interactions.  InCommon provides a framework for sharing network- accessible resources and information among a growing number of federated universities and companies. InCommon participants develop, deploy and promote technology, agreements and common practices that support the trusted  delivery of goods and services

      See Ken Klingenstein's presentation at http://middleware.internet2.edu/pki03/presentations/PKIREthinkTrust.htm
       

11. Video Conferencing - ViDe

    • ViDe Project Final Report : June 2003

    • Internet2 Commons Video-conferencing application
       

12. High Performance Computing

    •  SURA Members by State, and Federal Funding stats for 2001 (D. Updegrove) (ppt - 249Kb)

    • 2002 NSF Funding for SURA Member Institutions (Excel - 21kb) totaled $571,228,000

    • Regional members of the Coalition for Academic Scientific Computation (CASC)

      • Center for Computational Sciences, University of Kentucky; Dr. John Connolly, Director

      • East Carolina University; Dr. Ernest Marshburn, Director

      • CSIT, Florida State University; Dr. Joe Travis, Director

      • Computer and Information Technology Institute (CITI), Rice University; Jan Odegard, Director

      • Georgia Tech High Performance Computing; Ron Hutchins, CTO

      • Mississippi State University Engineering Research Center; Dr. David Marcum, Director

      • North Carolina Supercomputing Center; Dr. Eric Sills, Director*
             * Note: North Carolina State University is going to take over as CASC Member

      • Center for Computational Sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Dr. Thomas Zacharia, Director

      • Texas A&M Supercomputer Center; Dr. Tom Putnam, Director

      • Texas Advanced Computing Center, UT Austin; Dr. Jay Boisseau, Director

      • Texas Learning & Computation Center, University of Houston; Dr. Lennart Johnson, Director

      • High Performance Computing Center, Texas Tech University; Dr. Phil Smith, Director

      • University of Florida, Gainesville; Dr. Chuck Frazier, Director

      • Louisiana State University CAPITAL; Ed Seidel, incoming Director

    • SURA Computational Chemistry Workshop 2002

      • next workshop October 20-21, 2003 in Lexington, KY via VRVS and AG

    • SURA BioGrid Workshop, January 28-30, 2003

    • July 16 HPC Hearing, House Science Committee

    • NSF-CISE reorganization will directly impact HPC activities

    • NSF ETF - 3 awards being made; 2 are SURA region facilities: ORNL and UT-Austin (not yet announced to the public)

    • Oklahoma Supercomputer Symposium, Sept 25
       

13. Homeland Defense and Bio-Terrorism

    • Department of Homeland Security University Centers of Excellence Announcement (07/23/03)

    • University of Alabama Birmingham - Bioterrorism and emerging infections site

    • UAB is also participating in the Poxvirus Bioinformatics Resource Center.

    • Auburn University to Lead New Bioterrorism Threat Research

    • Tulane Center for Infectious Diseases

    • CDC Centers for Public Health Preparedness:

      • North Carolina Center

      • South Central Center - Tulane & UAB

      • University of South Carolina Center

    • The University of Georgia - Center for Leadership in Education and Applied Research in Mass Destruction Defense

    • The University of Louisville - Center for Deterrence of Biowarfare and Bioterrorism

    • Texas A& M University - National Emergency Response ans Rescue Training Center

    • University of Florida Targeting Bioterrorism Registry

    • University of Maryland Council For Security and Counter-Terrorism Studies

    • George Mason University National Center for Biodefense
       

    • NIH/NIAID Blue Ribbon Panel on Bioterrorism and Its Implications for Biomedical Research

    • BioTerrorism and University Reseach (article, NCURA newsletter April/May 2003)

 Please contact Melyssa Fratkin mbf26@georgetown.edu with questions, comments, corrections, etc.