SU to host wireless grid meeting for new university-industry research consortium

SU to host wireless grid meeting for new university-industry research consortiumNovember 21, 2006Margaret Costello Spillettmcostell@syr.edu

Syracuse University, Tufts University, the Museum of Science Boston and the Syracuse-based Wireless Grids Corp., host the first Wireless Grids Research Consortium and Future Industry Standards Meeting on Nov. 29 and 30 on the SU campus. The meeting is the kick-off event for a research consortium on wireless grids for academic, research and business partners working to develop network sharing environments.

The event begins Nov. 29 with a welcome at 6 p.m. by Raymond von Dran, dean of the School of Information Studies, in the CASE Center in the Center for Science and Technology on SU’s main campus. An open house with demonstrations of wireless grid technology applications — including software that can be used on a variety of platforms (Linux, Windows, Mac, etc.) — follows. The wireless grid connects users of mobile phones, Blackberries, computers and other wired and wireless devices, and allows them to share documents, photos, music, movies, printers, security devices and other resources.

“We will demonstrate publicly some of the first-ever applications that integrate networked PCs and consumer electronics into a local wireless grid, where your hardware, software and content resources can be easily shared,” says Lee McKnight, associate professor in the School of Information Studies (IST) and director of SU’s Wireless Grids Lab. “These demonstrations will help set the agenda for the university-industry research consortium.”

The demonstrations begin at 7 p.m. in the CASE Center. IST graduate students Mawaki Chango, Jeffrey Owens and Srinath Sinivasan, as well as Charlie Rabie and David Grandinetti of the Wireless Grids Corp., and Bill Lehr of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, will lead the demonstrations and discussion of the emerging technologies. The foundational work to create these technologies resulted from a National Science Foundation-funded project, Virtual Market in the Wireless Communication and Computational Grid, headed by McKnight.

“Wireless grids have the potential for connecting people and resources in new ways that can only be imagined now,” says Peter Wong, research professor at Tufts University and director of university relations at the Museum of Science Boston. “On one level, you can readily see that teenagers can use their phone and/or media player to share music and other media with friends in the same building instantly. Moving up in complexity, think about having a business roundtable where each person can take turns and use their laptop or PDA to wirelessly take control of an LCD projector. The technology is about more than being unwired. There will be more opportunities for entrepreneurship in developing social, commercial and technical developments that will affect society.”

Highlights of the following day’s meeting include an 8:45 a.m. keynote address by Dirk Trossen, a principal scientist at Nokia Research Center in Helsinki, Finland, who will speak via web conferencing, and by Ian Pringle, researcher for France Telecom in the United Kingdom, who will be on location. They will discuss “Wireless Grids in the Future: A Dialogue across Space and Time (Zones).”

The event features discussions of wireless grids visions, interfaces and implementation and research directions. These discussions will include the perspectives of distinguished technology experts from the academic community, global industry leaders such as Merv Andrade, the CTO of Aruba Networks, as well as senior researchers and technologists from such firms such Advance Newhouse Communications, France Telecom, IBM, Nokia, VTT (a wireless research lab in Finland) and Wireless Grids Corp.

“This meeting brings together some talented researchers from academia and industry to spend time grappling with the wireless grids in the context of a consortium that could benefit everyone,” Wong says. “Having consistent industry standards is one way of promoting growth of emerging technologies, and I hope that researchers and industry have thoughtful discussions that move ahead in terms of action items that help the consortium succeed.”

IST faculty members McKnight, Kevin Crowston, David Dischiave, David Lankes, Elizabeth Liddy, Joon Park, Ruth Small and Ping Zhang, as well as faculty members from SU’s Whitman School of Management, L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science and Newhouse School of Public Communications, will participate in the meeting.

For more information about the meeting or the research consortium, contact SU’s acting executive director of the Wireless Grids Consortium, Heshan Sun, at hesun@syr.edu.