UOIT to be a world leader in utilizing AccessGrid for delivery of innovative and specialized graduate studies opportunities
June 27, 2007
Despite having an audience located at five Ontario universities separated by hundreds of kilometres, Dr. Peter Berg, an assistant professor with the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT), was able to bring everyone into the same virtual classroom for his hydrogen fuel cell research seminar on Monday, June 4, as UOIT showcased its newly upgraded facilities for AccessGrid, the groundbreaking technology it will employ to deliver collaborative multi-institutional graduate courses beginning this fall.
Dr. Berg utilized AccessGrid to deliver his talk, the first to originate from UOIT as part of a seminar series that sees scientists at rotating host sites share their experiences related to the use of high-performance computing in their research.
AccessGrid is a group-to-group interaction add-on to the high-performance Shared Hierarchical Academic Research Computing Network (SHARCNET), of which UOIT is one of 16 academic partners.
In addition to being a computational grid (for high-performance computing) and a data grid (data storage is distributed geographically), AccessGrid allows SHARCNET to be used as a collaboration grid, enabling researchers and students to hold interactive multi-site meetings and participate in collaborative course delivery. This is made possible through SHARCNET's dedicated high-speed optical network.
"Use of this technology for the regular delivery of multi-institutional graduate courses will be truly groundbreaking," said Faculty of Science Dean Dr. William Smith, who is spearheading UOIT's use of AccessGrid for this purpose. "It catalyzes graduate training and research synergies across SHARCNET's leading research-intensive universities."
Researchers located at the universities of Guelph, Windsor and Western Ontario, along with McMaster University, were among the partners that sat in on Dr. Berg's seminar. The event also served as an opportunity to showcase UOIT's recently refurbished facilities, which will be used to deploy AccessGrid technology for the delivery of the courses in the UOIT-Trent University Master of Science in Materials Science program this fall. In addition, the facilities will be used to deliver a high-performance computing course that is part of the UOIT Master of Science in Modelling and Computational Science program. The course is being offered in collaboration with the University of Guelph, with discussions to bring other universities into the partnership well underway.
"The seminar talk went extremely well and provided further evidence that UOIT's leading role in introducing this incredible technology for the delivery of graduate research training will be of great benefit to students," said Dr. Dhavide Aruliah, an assistant professor with the Faculty of Science and UOIT's SHARCNET site leader. "Utilizing AccessGrid technology will enable UOIT to offer highly specialized graduate courses in advanced research areas to a broader group of students in a broader geographical area, such as the Materials Science program. AccessGrid closes the physical distance gaps that have tied the hands of universities in the past and opens up a vast new horizon of collaborative research and training possibilities for students and university researchers."
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