This award supports a U.S.-United Arab Emirates (UAE) Symposium and Workshop on High Capacity Optical Networks and Enabling Technologies (HONET), to be held November 3-5, 2007 in Dubai, UAE. The U.S. organizer is Dr. Yasin Raja, Department of Physics and Optical Science, University of North Carolina, Charlotte. The foreign organizers are Dr. Manshad Satti, IT Butler E-Services in Dubai, and Dr. Rafic Makki, Dean of the College of Information Sciences at the UAE University. Participation from Pakistan will be coordinated by Dr. Junaid Zaidi, Center for Information Technology, COMSATS University Islamabad, Pakistan. The meeting will bring together, academic and industry professionals for discussions on the thematic areas, with the focus on an emerging theme "High-speed Internet, Security, and Entrepreneurship". The sessions tie well into the theme which contributes to the next generation Internet technologies and applications. The co-organizers have successfully organized optical communications symposia prior to this one (www.honet.uncc.edu). The planned event will be collocated with 'Innovations in IT 2007' (an annual regional conference).
Intellectual merit: International collaboration is essential to stimulate research on future Internet innovations. This activity complements NSF's current GENI effort for future internet and next generation high-speed communication networks. The project expands the developments in this area to the Middle East, South Asia and neighboring regions. HONET 2007 also aligns well with CORONET (DARPA program), and GLIF (European Consortium). Sessions will cover: Optical Internet- Optical/Wireless and Satellite Communication- Metro/Access Networks- Traffic Engineering and Grooming- PON/FTTH (Optical Internet)- Network Security and Reliability- Grid Computing/Multi-Agent Systems- High-speed Internet and Entrepreneurship- Emerging Applications, Testbeds, Field Trials- Enabling Technologies- Sensor Networks Technologies & Applications- FTTH/Plenary Sessions (Academia, Industry and Government)- Recent Advances in Optical Networks- Grid-computing Workshop and Fiber-Optics Workshop. The workshop will provide opportunity to establish international linkage and strong collaborations for cutting-edge R&D and emerging applications, and will serve as launching platform for exploring international opportunities for US commercial sector.
Broader impacts: Increased collaboration in emerging optical and high-speed networking and security technologies will contribute toward improving and enhancing the next generation of Internet infrastructure. 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. The project will also streamline and accelerate collaborations among national and international professionals as well as the Middle Eastern and South Asian professionals. Moreover, the impact of a scalable high-speed networking infrastructure will foster an increased inter-disciplinary research in a wide range of fields, thereby improving the effectiveness of graduate education in the U.S. and globally. The results of advanced optical networks and enabling technologies can be applied to high-speed internet for research, education, and healthcare applications. The project will identify and align the opportunities for commercial sector to explore, and expand in emergent telecom and IT markets, foster and improve business and technology interactions with a region that is of key importance to long-term US interests, foster cutting-edge research and innovations, and promote international cooperation for scientific research and education. 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. Proceedings from the symposium/workshop will be widely published through U.S. scientific societies' journals.
