January 27, 2004

Canadian Government, Academic And Industry Leaders Visit
UC San Diego To Forge Technology Research Relationships

By Doug Ramsey

A delegation of senior government officials and business leaders from Alberta, Canada, today visited the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology [Cal(IT)²] to talk about campus-led technological innovation and potential cooperative research ventures.

(l-r) Alberta Minister of Innovation and Science Victor Doerksen, UCSD's Andrew Chien, Cal-(IT)² director and OptIPuter PI Larry Smarr, and BigBangwidth CEO Dan Gatti in front of mural of planned Cal-(IT)² headquarters building at UCSD.

The delegation was led by the Hon. Victor P. Doerksen, Alberta’s Minister of Innovation and Science, and included the Vice Presidents of Research from the University of Alberta, University of Calgary, and the University of Lethbridge, as well as delegates from the Alberta Science Research Authority and several other organizations.

Dan Gatti, President and CEO of Edmonton-based BigBangwidth, arranged for the Alberta delegation to visit BigBangwidth’s first U.S. installation at UCSD. “This visit underscores the importance the province of Alberta as well as its universities and companies place on cutting-edge research and technology transfer,” said Gatti. “The delegation observed how Alberta-based technology is used at UCSD, which opened dialogue on potential future projects that could be funded jointly by the U.S. and Canada.”

BigBangwidth originated with research at the University of Alberta. Last November, the company won approval to deploy its next-generation lightpath technology as part of a new Grid computing and networking environment—called the OptIPuter—on the UCSD campus. BigBangwidth’s Lightpath Accelerator™ automatically lifts large data streams off of packet-switched networks to provide direct lightpaths to high-performance network and storage devices.

The OptIPuter project is led by Cal-(IT)² director Larry Smarr, and its chief software architect is Andrew Chien, director of UCSD’s Center for Networked Systems. Smarr and Chien are both professors of Computer Science and Engineering in the university’s Jacobs School of Engineering, and they both met with the Canadian contingent. “California has a rich history of successful innovation and commercialization of technologies—an experience that we share with our Canadian colleagues,” said Chien. “We are excited about a number of areas where we could collaborate with leading researchers, companies, and institutions in Alberta, and this meeting is a great step forward in tapping the synergies.”

About Cal-(IT)²/OptIPuter

The California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology is one of four institutes created by the State in late 2000 to ensure that California maintain its leadership in cutting-edge technologies. Cal-(IT)²’s mission: to extend the reach of the current information infrastructure throughout the physical world – enabling anywhere/anytime access to the Internet. More than 220 professors and senior researchers from UC Irvine and UC San Diego are collaborating on interdisciplinary projects, including the OptIPuter, a five-year, $13.5 million project funded by the National Science Foundation. The southern California- and Chicago-based research teams are prototyping the OptIPuter on campus, metropolitan and state-wide optical fiber networks. www.optiputer.net www.calit2.net.

About BigBangwidth, Inc.

BigBangwidth provides up to 10-gigabit lightpaths directly to high-performance workstations, servers and other network devices. The Lightpath Accelerator™ enables file transfer for use within Grid computing, visualization and large file transfer. Established in 2000, BigBangwidth currently operates in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. www.bigbangwidth.com

About Center for Networked Systems

The Center for Networked Systems (CNS) at UCSD is an academic-industrial partnership which supports multi-disciplinary efforts across distributed systems, networking, and network elements. Its objective is to address critical challenges and develop technologies and frameworks to support future generations of robust, secure, manageable, and open networked systems. CNS is based in the Jacobs School of Engineering, and is affiliated with Cal-(IT)². cns.ucsd.edu

Media Contacts:
Doug Ramsey, OptIPuter/Cal-(IT)² (858) 822-5825 Cell: (619) 379-2912
Larry Perry, BigBangwidth, Inc. (866) 490-4800