Moss Landing Marine Laboratories and Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute Connect to California Research & Education Network (CalREN)

Cypress, CA - August 28, 2006 - The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) announced today that both the California State University's Moss Landing Marine Laboratories (MLML) and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) are connected to the Digital California tier of the California Research & Education Network (CalREN-DC). The two research institutions are linked to the CalREN-DC node in Soledad, CA at Gigabit speeds via AT&T's GigaMAN (Ethernet private line) service. CENIC contracts with AT&T to provide similar connectivity to many research and education entities throughout California.

As two of the premiere marine research institutions in the US and the world, MLML and MBARI will use their connection to CalREN to further their research programs and collaborations with other researchers worldwide and to enable complex ventures such as MBARI's Monterey Accelerated Research System (MARS), which will allow scientists to perform long-term and real-time experiments 900 meters below the surface of Monterey Bay and will serve as an engineering, science, and education test bed for even larger regional ocean observatories. The Institute's connection to CalREN will play a crucial role in making the data gathered by the MARS system available for MBARI researchers and others in the research community with a collaborative interest.

"As it stands right now, the MARS cable will allow us to get data from our instruments 50 kilometers offshore (and 900 meters below the sea surface) faster than we can transmit this data to scientists at other institutions," said Marcia McNutt, President and CEO of MBARI. "A new, high speed connection will help us clear up this bottleneck and will pave the way for new and exciting research projects in the future."

This bandwidth upgrade will enable MLML to serve large (terabyte) data files to the public and other researchers, stream video of MLML seminar presentations by world renowned marine scientists to other campuses or schools, and serve video of research activities to campuses and the public. In addition, MLML will be better able to participate in distance learning and serve detailed images associated with curriculum and research throughout the nation.

"It's important to the California State University that faculty, students and staff at MLML have the connectivity necessary to support their advanced research and teaching activities," said Dr. Mark Crase, Sr. Director, Technology Infrastructure Services for the CSU. "Accomplishing this in partnership with MBARI provides the additional benefit of enhancing collaboration within the broader Monterey Bay research and education community."

"The Monterey Bay area is home to some of the world's most prestigious marine researchers, and with this new high-speed connection to CalREN, opportunities for real-time interactive collaboratories have increased dramatically," said Jim Dolgonas, President and CEO of CENIC. "Ten years ago, California's research and education community created CENIC and CalREN precisely to enable world-class advancement and collaboration, and this connection is a perfect example of that. We look forward to seeing what both Moss Landing and MBARI will achieve with their connectivity to California and the world."

About CENIC

California's 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.

About Moss Landing Marine Laboratories

The Moss Landing Marine Laboratories is the lead institution in the CSU's Center for Integrative Coastal Observation, Research and Education. This observatory now involves 10 CSU campuses throughout Coastal California and is monitoring ocean conditions to inform resource managers, scientists and the public.

Since establishment in 1966, Moss Landing Marine Laboratories (MLML) has grown an international reputation for excellence in marine science research and education, and is the second oldest marine lab on Monterey Bay. MLML is operated by a consortium of seven California State University campuses (Fresno, East Bay, Monterey Bay, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, and Stanislaus), with consortium undergraduate and graduate students taking courses or pursuing their Masters of Science degrees at MLML. The MLML mission is to: "Provision the Pioneers of the Future in Marine Sciences." We do this through a hands-on, field-oriented approach to our curriculum, which places our students at the frontiers of marine science where discoveries are being made. The expertise of nine full-time MLML faculty is strongly complimented by a number of adjunct professors and affiliated researchers, and we serve approximately 120 students with the support of about 50 talented staff.

To learn more, please visit http://www.mlml.calstate.edu/.

About The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

The mission of MBARI, located in Moss Landing, CA, is to achieve and maintain a position as a world center for advanced research and education in ocean science and technology, and to do so through the development of better instruments, systems, and methods for scientific research in the deep waters of the ocean. MBARI emphasizes the peer relationship between engineers and scientists as a basic principle of its operation.

To carry out its mission, the institute has defined six main goals . to identify important areas of marine science where research progress is limited by lack of appropriate technology; to develop sophisticated systems for investigating aspects of the marine environment and its inhabitants where high scientific potential exists, to meet the highest possible performance standards for the operation of its equipment and technological systems; to conduct high-quality, innovative research that maximizes effective management and use of all MBARI assets; to develop, in collaboration with the Monterey Bay Aquarium, creative programs that maximize the educational value of MBARI's research results; and to transfer research results, technology, and operational techniques to the marine science community worldwide.

To learn more, please visit http://www.mbari.org/.