Cases & Voices

Erik, when this issue is published at the end of March 2021, it will be exactly a year since the world was struck by the COVID-19 pandemic and GÉANT closed its offices in Amsterdam and in Cambridge. Let’s talk about managing an organisation from the home office. What are your major reflections after one year?

The Universidad Nacional Agraria (National Agrarian University - UNA), a member of the Nicaraguan University Network of Broadband (RUNBA), of the National Council of Universities (CNU), started on February 12, 2021, the connection of its data network to the global network through the IPv6 protocol. Through this action, RUNBA gained direct access to Google, Microsoft and AWS services through RedCLARA.

The Chilean academic network (REUNA) announced last March 16  the launch of the country's Telemedicine University Network, RUTE-Chile, the first network outside of Brazil in the field of health education and research of RUTE-Latin America.

(Press Release from the Pierre Auger Collaboration) The Pierre Auger Collaboration is releasing 10% of the data recorded using the world’s largest cosmic ray detector. These data are being made available publicly with the expectation that they will be used by a wide and diverse community including professional and citizen-scientists and for educational and outreach initiatives. While the Auger Collaboration has released data in a similar manner for over a decade, the present release is much wider with regard to both the quantity and type of data, making them suitable both for educational purposes and for scientific research. The data can be accessed at www.auger.org/opendata [1].

Connectivity can be a major hurdle for global collaborative research organisations. Such initiatives are progressively taking centre stage as humanity seeks to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time and to answer questions about the universe.

On January 18th, the representatives of LA-CoNGA physics welcomed the seventy students from Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela, who will be part of the first group of advanced physics postgraduate courses compatible with the model of the European Union. This ERASMUS + CBHE project co-financed by the European Commission with the participation of universities from the mentioned countries, university and scientific institutions in Europe, and RedCLARA, is committed to the development of a collaborative offer of specialized learning, with the participation of 11 universities in Latin America and Europe.