Media Contact:
Janis Cortese, CENIC, (714) 220-3454, jcortese@cenic.org

High-Performance Broadband Educational Projects in California to Receive CENIC 2007 Innovations in Networking Awards

Educational Projects in Kings County, San Bernardino, Coachella Valley, and Bay Area Recognized for Major Innovation Awards

Cypress, CA - March 5, 2007 - Four innovative, cutting-edge educational and research projects throughout the state of California have been recognized by the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) as Innovations in Networking Award Winners for 2007. Awards will be presented on March 13, 2007, in La Jolla, CA at CENIC's annual conference. CENIC '07: Making Waves, will be held at the San Diego La Jolla Marriott Hotel from March 12 - 14.

CENIC owns, operates, and manages the California Research & Education Network (CalREN), a state-spanning high-performance Internet network consisting of 2,500 miles of optical fiber to which K-20 schools, colleges, universities and other educational and research sites in all 58 of California's counties connect. The most advanced such network in the nation, CalREN serves up to 9.5 million Californians every day and links hundreds of educational and research sites to one another and to colleagues nationally and internationally.

As such, CENIC is in the unique position of observing some of the most advanced networking applications of benefit to students, faculty, researchers, and other Californians. Four of these applications have been chosen for 2007 Innovations in Networking awards:

Gigabit/Broadband Applications: The Kings County Last Mile Project:
Kings County is a rural county situated in the southern Central Valley and, as a rural county faced with unique networking challenges, it required an innovative and visionary solution to bring the benefits of broadband to its K-12 students, faculty, and staff. Thanks to Jerry Waymire of the Kings County Office of Education, the county is now covered with high-capacity wireless microwave connections for all 54 schools and 11 wireless cells utilizing Motorola's Canopy product that provide for educational-use-only connectivity for students and faculty at home.

Gigabit/Broadband Applications: Connecting Coachella Valley to the World:
Robert Webb's and the Webb Foundation's dream was to bridge the "digital divide" in their local community. The Foundation began an annual "Heads Up" technology seminar with local network administrators where they discussed advances in computers, networking, and local infrastructure needs. Subsequently, the Webb Foundation provided a planning grant to CENIC to identify opportunities for improving networking in the region. As a result of this work, and with the help of The H.N. and Frances C. Berger Foundation, CENIC, and its grantees, a 400-mile, $3.4 million fiber path now extends the CalREN backbone through the Coachella Valley. The area now enjoys state-of-the-art broadband Internet connectivity which promises to educate as well as benefit the community at large for many years to come. Already, the University of California Riverside and the California State University San Bernardino's Palm Desert campuses, as well as the College of the Desert, currently enjoy world-class connectivity to their colleagues in California and around the world.

Educational Applications: EduStream.org:
Like districts everywhere, the San Bernardino Community College District (SBCCD) enhances its educational offering with rich media, including telecourses. Such courses can sometimes confront limitations where face-to-face class time is often dedicated to testing instead of quality interactions between students and faculty and students themselves. Solving this problem with video-on-demand can be costly. The solution developed by the SBCCD is EduStream.org, an educational rich media application that empowers colleges to offer video content to enhance course offerings while addressing producers' authentication and copyright concerns.

High-Performance Research Applications: iAnatomy:
Using the Gigabit connectivity between CalREN and the Canadian research and education network CA*net4, via Pacific Wave, a joint project of Pacific NorthWest Gigapop and CENIC, Stanford University has collaborated with the Northern Ontario School of Medicine to create iAnatomy, a project by which faculty and students can interact live with Stanford's Bassett Collection of high-resolution medical images, including 3-D images, during classroom presentations. As an illustration of the benefits of broadband connectivity for distributed medical learning, the iAnatomy project is particularly valuable. Not only does it offer an example of how to make expert resources available to the research and education community worldwide, but it functions quickly and seamlessly, without a prohibitively steep learning curve.

"Our responsibility as the provider of broadband networking to California's research and education community comes with a great many privileges," said Jim Dolgonas, President and CEO of CENIC. "Certainly, one of the most enjoyable of these is observing the frankly amazing ways in which the members of that community put their connectivity to use. This year's award winners are perfect examples of the ways in which high-performance networking can enrich the lives of all parts of that community . students, faculty, researchers and staff . by connecting them to one another and the world. And the advances they make help to better the lives of all Californians." CENIC will also recognize Jack McCredie with its Outstanding Individual Achievement award for 2007 for the outstanding leadership he provided to CENIC during its first 5 years of existence. McCredie served on the CENIC Board of Directors until June 2002. During his tenure, his outstanding contributions and visionary leadership helped shape the success of CENIC. The awards ceremony will take place at the San Diego La Jolla Marriott Hotel in La Jolla, CA on March 13, 2007 at 12:00PM.

Any questions about the awards or the CENIC annual conference "CENIC '07: Making Waves" can be directed to Janis Cortese, Manager of Publicity and Communications, at (714) 220-3454 or jcortese@cenic.org.

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.