US Ignite Funds Next Gen Research Networks

The National Science Foundation (NSF) that it will serve as the lead federal agency for a new initiative aimed at sparking a new generation of academic networks and transformative applications.


US Ignite will expand on investments in the NSF-funded Global Environment for Networking Innovation (GENI) project by stitching together high-speed broadband resources to create a testbed across universities and cities throughout the United States. GENI is a fast, programmable "virtual laboratory" that enables university researchers to experiment on so-called future internets.


"We've laid the groundwork for this national testbed by enabling foundational research by more than 300 researchers and 60 universities across the country to develop and prototype GENI," said Farnam Jahanian, assistant director of NSF's Directorate for Computer Information Science and Engineering. "Now, NSF will encourage the next steps for research on GENI. Experiments at-scale will transform cybersecurity, network performance, and cloud computing research, and will jumpstart applications, which have the potential for profound societal and economic impacts."


NSF is funding four new projects:


The University of Massachusetts Amherst is connecting radars to ultra-high-speed networks to improve weather prediction--an application to help mitigate the impacts of natural disasters.


The University of Missouri Columbia is exploring the potential for early detection of health changes with research on unobtrusive monitoring of individuals with in-home sensors--possibly extending independent living for seniors.


Case Western Reserve University is developing high-definition, multipoint videoconferencing and realizing its potential to improve healthcare delivery--enabling, for instance, seniors to consult clinicians for diagnosis and treatment, without leaving their homes.


The University of Tennessee, Chattanooga is working on a disaster response system that provides emergency staff with training and planning, as well as real-time guidance on effective strategies to protect first responders and the general public--greatly improving public safety.


The NSF is soliciting further proposals for the development of novel applications that take advantage of advanced networks developed through GENI and have societal impact.


The NSF is also sponsoring the Mozilla Foundation to host an open innovation challenge, called Mozilla Ignite. This challenge will invite designers, developers, university researchers, entrepreneurs and other visionaries across America to brainstorm and build next-generation applications in areas of national priority that take advantage of advanced networks.


President Obama is announcing the US Ignite launch at a White House event on June 14.
http://www.nsf.gov