News

Register Now for the Fall 2011 Internet2 Member Meeting

Registration is open for the Fall 2011 Internet2 Member Meeting, scheduled for October 3-6 in Raleigh, North Carolina. The meeting will be hosted by MCNC, operators of the North Carolina Research and Education Network (NCREN), in conjunction with their annual NCREN Community Day. Member Meeting attendees are encouraged to take advantage of this opportunity and add Community Day sessions to their agendas. While you are registering, please take a moment to reserve your room, as the meeting room block closes on September 2. Full meeting information, including the program, registration, and lodging details, is available online.

Internet2 Welcomes Mary Sue Coleman as the New Chair of the Internet2 Board of Trustees

University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman has been elected chair of the Internet2 Board of Trustees, serving a one-year term. Coleman succeeds Jeffrey Lehman, who became Board chair in January 2007. Lehman joined the Board in 2004, and will continue his service until his term ends in 2013. During his tenure as chair, he played an instrumental role in the implementation of the Internet2 governance structure as it exists today.

Indiana University President Michael McRobbie has been elected vice chair, and will serve in this role until July 2012. He will then become chair and serve in that role until July 2015. The member-focused board provides strategic direction, leadership and oversight for the organization and greater community.

Mary Sue Coleman has led the University of Michigan since being appointed its 13th president in August 2002. President Coleman has led groundbreaking partnerships and served in many leadership positions throughout higher education. She is one of three co-chairs appointed by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke to lead the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship and recently joined President Obama’s Advanced Manufacturing Partnership. She has served as a member of the Internet2 Board of Trustees since 2003. In 2008, as chair of the Internet2 Board Membership Committee, she led an effort that resulted in the first significant change to Internet2’s membership structure. The University of Michigan was an instrumental founding member of Internet2 when it was established in 1997. Read the full press release.

IDEA Awards Deadline Extended to August 22

Internet2 has extended the deadline for nominations for the 2011 Internet2 IDEA Awards through Monday, August 22.

To highlight the latest wave of emerging innovations, Internet2 is seeking 2011 IDEA Award candidates from Internet2 community institutions that demonstrate the application of advanced networking to enable transformational progress in research, scholarship, collaboration, teaching and learning by researchers, faculty, and students. This year, the IDEA awards will also add a new Student category to showcase student led projects that are having a major impact on the research and education community. Details and the submission form are available at internet2.edu/idea.

Meet Anchor Innovator Robert L. Musgrove

This month's featured Anchor Innovator is Dr. Robert Musgrove, President of Pine Technical College in rural Pine City, Minnesota. PTC is connected to Internet2 via the Minnesota SEGP. Through Dr. Musgrove's leadership, Internet2 connectivity has allowed Pine Technical College to collaborate in an unprecedented manner with other colleges, universities, industry, health care institutions, research labs, performing arts centers and an immense array of other resources – all of which are being brought to bear to improve student outcomes and opportunities. View Robert's full profile here http://k20.internet2.edu/innovators/Musgrove.

Anchor Innovators are individuals from within the National Internet2 K20 Initiative community doing good work in support of community anchor institutions such as K-12 schools, libraries, community colleges, museums, science centers, and other cultural and performing arts organizations. Additional anchor innovator profiles are available on the K20 Initiative website. If you have anchor innovators in your community you'd like to see profiled, please send suggestions to James Werle.

InCommon News

InCommon Passes 300 Participant Mark: During the last month, InCommon welcomed its 300th participant. The InCommon community now includes 312 participants, including 222 higher education institutions, 12 research centers and agencies, and 78 sponsored partners. InCommon started 2011 with 264 participants.

“There are three factors contributing to this growth,” said John Krienke, InCommon chief operating officer. “First, we added the Research Organization category and have seen a number of national labs join. Second, more and more colleges and universities are seeing the value of the InCommon Certificate Service. Finally, federated identity management is becoming more mainstream.”

National Science Foundation Announces Federated Access to Research.gov: National Science Foundation (NSF) grantee institutions that are also InCommon participants can now provide their faculty and staff with the ability to log into Research.gov using their university-issued user IDs and passwords. Once logged into Research.gov, principal investigators (PIs) and co-PIs can connect seamlessly to FastLane services without having to log in again. Since launching this service about a month ago, the NSF reports that 11 universities have completed the relatively simple integration process, with another 20 institutions in the pipeline.

Federating Research.gov will help reduce the administrative burden associated with maintaining multiple user IDs and passwords, while providing for the secure exchange of information and access to NSF's online resources. More information about participating in the Research.gov/ InCommon integration service is available by emailing feedback@research.gov

Pennsylvania Consortium Develops Standard Agreement: Another consortium, this time the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE), has developed a standard agreement with InCommon. The template agreement between PASSHE and InCommon allows all 14 PASSHE members to join InCommon under the same terms and conditions, simplifying the process for both parties by ensuring that the legal and policy issues are addressed consistently for PASSHE institutions. PASSHE joins other state university systems in California, Texas, and Maryland that have established system-wide agreements with InCommon.

“It is clear that the future of higher education is about collaboration and academic partnerships. Executing this agreement gives our institutions the ability to more effectively connect with our partners and simplify technology access for our employees and students,” said Dr. John C. Cavanaugh, Chancellor of PASSHE.

Governance Updates

AMSAC

The Applications, Middleware, and Services Advisory Council (AMSAC) subcommittees on Unified Communications (UC) and Services above the Network (Net+) met in July. The UC group reviewed a draft document describing the situation on campuses and the options for potential UC services offered by Internet2. A wiki page has been setup to provide detail and solicit member feedback. The Net+ group reviewed a proposed Internet2 service offering addressing Large Scale Data Transfer.

AOAC

The Architecture and Operations Advisory Council (AOAC) held a call on August 10. Chris Robb, Internet2, provided an update on the progress of the network build. The first 100G link in the new network, from New York to Washington, D.C., is being tested. Also, since the beginning of 2011, several equipment upgrades have occurred at MANLAN with a router choice made that supports OpenFlow. Eric Boyd, Internet2, and Matt Davy, Indiana University, described the program plan for NDDI/OS3E. At the Internet2 Fall Member Meeting, there will be a demo system with a small number of nodes using a persistent vlan service created through modifications to ION. Further development will occur between the Member Meeting and Supercomputing in support of additional demos. Building on the work of the NTAC from the spring of 2011 (NTAC Evaluation of Internet2 Layer 2 Service document) the AOAC also endorsed having the NTAC engage with Internet2 staff to determine the best way to structure community involvement in the NDDI project. An NTAC call will be held on August 18, 4:00 EDT to begin this discussion.