This international travel award will allow six researchers from the US network science and engineering community to travel to Madrid, Spain in early December 2008 to participate with their European Union counterparts in the 1st FIRE-GENI Workshop, which is hosted by the European Commission. The goal of the meeting is to discuss possible interconnection of the control planes of the various suites of infrastructure (e.g., GENI, DANTE, GEANT, FEDERICA, etc.) It is now clear that there could be substantial benefit to both the US and the European Union to work out interconnections issues now. NSF and the EC have each agreed to host a number of meetings in order to achieve this interconnection. Bringing together researchers from multiple technical communities in the US and Europe will contribute to identifying opportunities for international collaboration and coordination. This meeting (and any subsequent ones on this topic) will improve the capabilities of future network research infrastructure through increased commonality, sharing and community building.
