The Indiana University High Performance Network Applications Program (HPNAP) is an initiative of the Office of the Vice President for Information Technology. It provides funding to assist IU faculty, graduate students and staff on all campuses of the University to develop innovative applications in research and teaching that require high performance local, regional or national research networks.
Aim of the Program
High performance digital networks and distributed software systems are transforming the way we work, communicate, learn, retrieve and store information, and conduct research. The purpose of the Program is to promote development, implementation, and testing of innovative applications in research and teaching that use advanced local, national and international networks available to the IU community, as well as emerging high performance domestic network connection technologies such as cable modems, xDSL, satellite and wireless.
The Program aims to significantly accelerate the development of next generation network-based applications and development tools at IU through a joint effort of faculty, graduate students and staff and University Information Technology Services (UITS). The Program will provide funds, access to advanced networks and support resources through peer reviewed proposals. Applications developed through the Program can be expected to provide considerable competitive advantage to the University.
Indiana University, through a number of recent major developments at the state, national, and international level, has been able to provide the IU community with unprecedented access to high bandwidth networks. IU has achieved a position of prominence in advanced networking through a number of efforts such as participation in the Internet2 Abilene network, the National Science Foundation's vBNS research network, and development of the TransPAC international research network. Major enhancements to these networks can be expected to continue over the next few years.
The development of advanced applications which capitalize on the capabilities of high performance networks is in its infancy. Routine access to such networks has only recently become available. At the moment the development of such applications takes considerable effort though this will change as development techniques mature.
Some examples of projects in the sciences, humanities, teaching, learning and distributed education, and new collaboration technologies supported by HPNAP funding include:
Sciences — distributed computational fluid dynamics, remote use of telescopes, continuous data collection and analysis from large seismic arrays, remote sensing environmental data management, and global-scale genomic data bases.
Humanities — archaeological reconstruction, and shared virtual spaces for composing and playing music.
Teaching, learning, and distributed education — observation and recording facilities for educational psychology and the scholarship of teaching, and network mediated collaborative teaching and learning in medicine, engineering, environmental safety, and business.
New collaboration and communication technologies — spatial interfaces to large digital libraries, new methods for navigating virtual spaces, and wireless networks for interactive collaboration.
