IUB, IUPUI, AND PURDUE MARK I-LIGHT ANNIVERSARY, HIGHLIGHT STATE
UNIVERSITY PARTNERSHIP
Researchers to demonstrate advances in science and information
technology enabled by I-Light at December 4 workshop;
internationally-acclaimed Larry Smarr to keynote
INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana -- In December of last year, Governor Frank
O'Bannon symbolically launched I-Light, a fiber optic network connecting
Indiana University Bloomington, IUPUI, and Purdue University's West
Lafayette campus to each other, and to the national Internet2
infrastructure. One year later, the network is already enabling
important new research and applications while realizing cost savings for
the campuses and the State. These achievements will be celebrated at the
I-Light Applications Workshop, December 4, at IUPUI.
The I-Light Network was the first fully operational network of its type
and a distinction for the State of Indiana. "I-Light strengthens
Indiana's growing reputation as a major center for information
technology and telecommunications, and positions the State's research
universities at the forefront in the development of advanced
telecommunications applications," said Indiana University Vice President
for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer Michael McRobbie.
On December 4, researchers and technologists from IU Bloomington, IUPUI,
and Purdue will demonstrate some of the advances in science and
information technology already made possible by I-Light. At the first
I-Light Applications Workshop, to be held at the IUPUI University Place
Conference Center in Indianapolis, participants can learn how the
I-Light network is being used for applications in advanced computing,
visualization, and remote collaboration, and about how the I-Light
networking environment can enrich research programs in a wide variety of
disciplines.
The keynote speaker for the workshop is the internationally acclaimed
Larry Smarr.
Smarr is a pioneer in prototyping a national information infrastructure
to support academic research, governmental functions, and industrial
competitiveness, and is the founding director of the California
Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology at the
Universities of California at San Diego and Irvine. Smarr previously
served as founding director for both the National Center for
Supercomputing Applications and the National Computational Science
Alliance Presently, Smarr is a member of the President's Information
Technology Advisory Committee.
"I-Light has allowed IU and Purdue to pool their high-end computational
resources and create a facility with an aggregate peak capacity well
over one trillion mathematical operations per second," noted Dr. Craig
Stewart, IU's Director of Research and Academic Computing. "As a result,
scientists from both universities have the ability to run extremely
large applications, including biomedical applications used by
researchers working in the Indiana Genomics Initiative at IU, as well as
homeland security applications being used by researchers at Purdue."
I-Light supports highly advanced research applications and makes
possible virtual, real-time collaborative workspaces for scientists and
technologists on the core campuses of Indiana's major research
universities. In addition, I-Light enables scientists and researchers to
exchange tremendously increased volumes of scientific data.
In the year since its inception, I-Light has made possible greater
independence in telecommunications through decreased dependence on
telecommunication providers. "With multiple strands of optical fiber,
I-Light increases current networking capacity by many orders of
magnitude, providing more than enough capacity to meet demand over the
next 10 to 20 years, " said Brian D. Voss, IU Associate Vice President
for Telecommunications. "For example, in August of this year, IU was
able to achieve a near four-fold increase in capacity for normal
Internet traffic -- at no increase in cost - by leveraging I-Light and
its connectivity and co-location with the national internet infrastructure in Indianapolis."
This increased capacity, which is in addition to existing Internet2
connectivity, is allocated equally between the Halls of Residence at
IUB, the IUB campus, and the IUPUI campus and its connections to the six
regional campuses. As well, Purdue and the State of Indiana, via the
Indiana Higher Education Telecommunication System, were able to obtain similar capacity improvements at no additional cost using I-Light.
The I-Light Applications Workshop provides an occasion for participants
to explore opportunities for collaboration, research, and scholarship
using I-Light. For more about I-Light and the upcoming workshop, see:
Contact:
Christine Y. Fitzpatrick
Deputy Communications Officer
IU Office of the Vice President for Information Technology & CIO 317-278-1818 (voice) 317-274-4513 (fax) cfitzpat@iu.edu
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