International partnership offers look into future of research

International partnership offers look into future of research

BY
MARGOT DIMOND
Rice News Staff

When International
University Bremen opens its 80-acre campus in northern Germany
in the fall of 2001, it will offer baccalaureate, masters
and doctoral degrees in the natural sciences, engineering,
humanities and social sciences.

One of the first
private research and educational institutions in Germany,
IUB also will offer students from around the world an opportunity
to assume leadership roles within the global economy.

What this institution
will not offer is a library—at least not a traditional
library.

Instead, through
collaboration with Rice, IUB will have a completely digital
Information Resource Center, becoming the most technologically
dependent residential school in the world.

Establishing
a university with a digital foundation has been made possible
through a strategic alliance between Rice and Enron Broadband
Services (EBS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Enron Corp.
In June, Rice signed a 10-year contract with EBS to establish
two optic cables (DS-3 lines) directly from Rice to the
IUB campus. This connection—the first international
direct high-speed line between two universities—will
allow simultaneous and constantly available resources to
users at both ends.

Broadband applications
will be phased in. During the first two years, as IUB begins
to develop its curriculum and coordinate with Rice on selected
areas of academic exchange, the uses of the Enron connection
will concentrate on file transfers, video streaming and
video conferencing. At its opening, IUB will have access
to a wealth of Rice’s library resources, including
a large set of full textbooks and journals; CD-ROMS for
bibliographies, image sets and statistical data; and interlibrary
loan and document delivery services.

IUB also will
be able to share in the Research Channel, which broadcasts
over the Internet videos of seminars, colloquia, special
lectures and other events among a consortium of higher education
institutions.

In addition,
Rice plans to construct a state-of-the-art video conference
room on campus, with a similar installation at IUB. The
high-speed connection allows for nearly instantaneous delivery
from point to point.

After 2003, as
IUB further develops its curriculum and research programs
and the intellectual ties to Rice become more formalized,
there will be collaborative research in such disciplines
as bioengineering, geoscience, neuroscience, industrial
design and cultural studies. Potential applications include
molecular modeling, structural genomics, integrated 3-D
visualization of data, virtual reality and the creation
of real-time laboratories on each campus.

“The Enron
broadband connection between Rice and IUB represents a new
frontier of international collaboration,” said vice
president and chief information officer Chuck Henry, who
is working on the project at Rice.

“We now
have a superb opportunity to develop, implement and test
the concept and reality of a truly innovative, international
electronic information environment for teaching and research.
The results of this alliance may indeed change the way we
think of a university in the years to come.”