This project supports a U.S.-Pakistan Symposium and Workshop on High Capacity Optical Networks and Enabling Technologies, to be held in December 2005 in Islamabad, Pakistan. The U.S. organizer is Dr. Yasin Raja, Department of Physics and Optical Science, University of North Carolina, Charlotte. The Pakistani organizers are Dr. Junaid Zaidi, Center for Information Technology, COMSATS University, Islamabad and Dr. Muhammad Afzal, Director, Center for Information Technology, University of Arid Agriculture, Rawalpindi, Pakistan. The symposium will address the evolution of the optical Internet for telecom and IT use from the architectural, signal transport and application perspectives. The symposium will bring together 18 U.S. scientists and engineers from various universities and industrial organizations together with a large number of professionals from Pakistan and from other participating South Asian countries. The program will comprise a mix of technical talks, invited keynotes, interactive panels, and focus group meetings. Technical sessions will cover: network security and privacy; standards and routing protocols; passive optical networks; enabling technologies; multi-agent systems; optical-wireless networks; optical network II; grid computing and optical control planes; testbed experiences; and higher education in telecommunication technologies. Technical Merits: The topic of this meeting is important and timely. Increased awareness of emerging optical and high-speed networking technologies will contribute towards improving the Internet infrastructure in the countries involved. In particular, the evolution to higher bit-rates and access-speeds will foster increased research and development at educational institutions and use of digital libraries for mass education. It will strengthen research collaboration, including with U.S. scientists and engineers. The symposium will address the training of scientists and engineers who are capable of integrating advanced networking and enabling photonic technologies for the optical Internet. Visiting US scientists will gain a perspective on international research activities, by interacting with their counterparts from South Asian countries, and by gaining insight into the development and evolution of research and instructional programs there. Proceedings from the symposium/workshop will be widely published through U.S. scientific societies' journals. Broader Impact: Three U.S. junior scientists and three students will participate in the meetings and will be exposed to an international forum of research of global interest. This experience should enhance the potential for building collaborations in other developing countries/regions of interest to the United States, e.g., Asia, Africa, Latin America. The US participants will come from eight states and will include professionals, graduate students, women, and under-represented groups. The planned participation from a significant number of COMSATS member countries (from South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, www.comsats.org.pk) will present opportunities for US firms to collaborate with their counter parts. The meeting will promote a global research culture within the United States and will highlight the U.S.'s continued commitment to global educational development. The Higher Education Commission of Pakistan and the Pakistan Telecom Corporation are co-sponsoring the meeting.
