California's Research and Education Elite Gather in Oakland for CENIC's Tenth Annual Networking Conference, "Your Connection to the World"

Oakland, CA - March 13, 2006 - The best and brightest of California research and education, in addition those from Nevada, Arizona and Mexico, will gather from March 13-15 in Oakland for "Your Connection to the World," the tenth annual networking conference given by the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC).

A nonprofit corporation formed by California's research and higher education communities, CENIC owns and operates the California Research and Education Network (CalREN), the most advanced state research and education network in the country, serving all University of California and California State University campuses as well as California's community college system and K-12 schools, Caltech, Stanford, the University of Southern California, the Nevada System of Higher Education, Arizona State University, and the University of Arizona.

Taking place at the Marriott Oakland City Center Hotel, "Your Connection To The World" will include three days of presentations by leading network experts, researchers, and educators about high-bandwidth networking for California's educational and research institutions such as that provided by CENIC, and the leading-edge discoveries and innovation that it enables. Keynote presentations will be given by Dr. Francine Berman of the San Diego Supercomputer Center and Scott Bradner, Harvard University's Technology Security Officer.

CENIC will also formally present its annual Innovations in Networking Awards. With these awards, CENIC seeks to highlight network applications by identifying exemplary innovations that leverage the network and have the potential to improve the way instruction and research is conducted, even when the impact of the innovation may not be felt immediately.

CENIC's Award for Outstanding Individual Contributions will be given to David Wasley for his invaluable contributions to high-bandwidth networking for research and education in California. Wasley was instrumental in initiating the discussions which led to the formation of CENIC and served as CENIC's first Director of Projects. This required not only the technical expertise necessary to meld differing types of networks into one cohesive architecture, but the organizational skills to finalize by-laws and help form the first CENIC board and committees.

The Innovation Award for Experimental/Developmental Applications will go to iGrid 2005 host Larry Smarr, Director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), and iGrid's co-chairs, Maxine Brown of the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and Tom DeFanti of UIC and Calit2. More than four dozen pioneering applications from 20 countries showcased at the September event in San Diego, many of them linking different countries on different continents.

The Innovation Award for Broadband Applications will go the Loma Linda Connected Communities Project. Through this project, Loma Linda has become one of only 40 cities nationwide that provide fiber-to-the-home and business directly to residents and to include such specifications in their building law. Residents now enjoy connectivity of the sort that only universities and top business parks claim elsewhere in the US.

The Innovation Award for Educational Applications will go to Acme Animation, an educational project that uses IP-based videoconferencing to connect students in California schools with experts in digital animation from major studios such as Pixar, Disney, Dreamworks, Warner Brothers, and Sony. Students learn digital animation skills and important lessons about working in the animation industry through their discussions with professional animators.

The Innovation Award for High-Performance Applications will go to MonALISA (Monitoring Agents using a Large Integrated Services Architecture). MonALISA, developed over the last four years by Caltech and its partners at CERN and the Universitatea Politehnica Bucharest, is a globally scalable framework of services to monitor and help manage and optimize the operational performance of computing grids, networks, and running applications in real-time. This framework is ideal for creating and dynamically managing dispersed collaborative environments over Internet networks.

"These projects are all stunning examples of the ways in which high-bandwidth networking can benefit not only research and education but the community at large," said CENIC President Jim Dolgonas. "With global collaboration becoming a reality in all areas of endeavor, it's more important than ever to recognize the people who are helping to advance and expand the means by which that collaboration will take place. CENIC is proud to have played a part in enabling their successes."

Presenters include representatives from California.s research institutions and K-20 educational community, such as:

• CENIC
• National LambdaRail
• The California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology
• The Naval Postgraduate School
• Pacific Northwest Gigapop
• The California Institute of Technology
• The California State University System
• The University of California
• Arizona State University
• The NASA Ames Research Center

Representatives from the following corporations will also be giving presentations about their technology and how it enables research and education over networks like CalREN:

• Cisco Systems
• Level 3 Communications
• AT&T
• Movaz Networks
• Calient Networks
• NetFlow
• Pacific Interface, Inc.
• Packet Design

"Your Connection To The World" is sponsored by Cisco Systems, Level 3 Communications, AT&T, Ciena Corporation, Juniper Networks, and Movaz Networks and takes place at the Marriott Oakland City Center Hotel from March 13-15, 2006. More information can be found at http://www.cenic.org/events/cenic2006/.

About CENIC

California's higher education and research communities leverage their networking resources under CENIC, the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, in order to obtain cost-effective, high-bandwidth networking to support their missions and answer the needs of their faculty, staff, and students. CENIC designs, implements, and operates CalREN, the California Research and Education Network, a high-bandwidth, high-capacity Internet network specially designed to meet the unique requirements of these communities, and to which the vast majority of the state.s K-20 educational institutions are connected. In order to facilitate collaboration in education and research, CENIC also provides connectivity to non-California institutions and industry research organizations with which CENIC's Associate researchers and educators are engaged.

CENIC is governed by its member institutions. Representatives from these institutions also donate expertise through their participation in various committees designed to ensure that CENIC is managed effectively and efficiently, and to support the continued evolution of the network as technology advances.