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The Asia Pacific Advanced Network, APAN connects the research and education networks of Asia and Oceania to each other and to other research networks around the world. APAN coordinates developments and interactions among its members, and with peer international organisations, in both network technology and applications, and is a key driver in promoting and facilitating network-enabled research collaboration; knowledge discovery; telehealth; and natural disaster mitigation. In this interview the Interim General Manager of APAN, George McLaughlin, presents his view of regional research and education network and the importance of global collaboration.

What comes to your mind when you hear that a researcher is talking about collaboration?
I see a dynamic environment where the researcher is interacting with his/her collaborators across the country, and around the world, using high quality immersive environments; where the researcher’s local team controls a scientific instrument on another continent as part of their experiments; and where the data collected can be compared, contrasted and analysed against data held in massive databases, from related experiments, located a several other centres around the globe.  The innovative approaches used in network-enabling these collaborations lead to massive acceleration of the research outcomes, more timely results, and an edge on potential commercialisation.

What would you identify as the main importance of research and education networks?
Research and Education Networks provide a “first mover” advantage whereby educators can develop and deploy innovative approaches to teaching and “challenge setting”, and students can take advantage of a richer and more interactive environment for learning and discovery, well ahead of services currently offered through traditional mechanisms.

The deployment of globally linked Regional Research and Education Networks provide researchers with access to instruments, massive data sets, vast computing and analytical resources and easy virtual access to collaborators anywhere, enabling disruptive enhancements to all areas of research.

How would you describe the role of APAN at both a regional and a global level?
APAN’s Member countries account for more than 55% of the world’s population. APAN has engendered strong regional network-enabled collaboration across Asia where the potential is enormous.

An important role for APAN is to help train the next generation of network engineers and applications specialists.  APAN has a strong focus on network engineering, network research and advanced audio-visual communications services; it also has an important role in supporting a number of application areas that are highly dependent on networks.  The APAN medical working group is among one of the most active among the R&E community. In recent times, intercontinental cyber-cultural performances have become a feature of APAN meetings. Earth Monitoring and Agriculture are among other applications areas where APAN has a strong presence.

APAN partners with the other Regional Research and Education Network organisations. Internet2, DANTE, CANARIE, RedCLARA, TERENA and the World Bank are all Liaison Members of APAN. APAN also has a range of MoUs and other agreements with organisations such as the Trans-Eurasian Information Network (TEIN), GLORIAD, NICT, and with UNESCO’s CONNECT-Asia initiative. APAN is an active participant in many programs with our other regional partners.

How important for APAN is collaboration with other regional networks and in what ways do you collaborate at a global level?
Collaborations at all levels (networking, performance, advanced communications services, applications) must be global in scope. This is very important for APAN while noting that excellent technical networking and innovative advanced communication services, must have an engaged user base ready to exploit such improvements.  Awareness raising of the opportunities that R&E networking enables is an important function for everyone involved.

A feature of APAN’s twice-yearly meetings is the Global Collaborations workshops, where examples from around the world and within Asia are presented.

There are many active research collaborations between APAN’s Member communities and those of the Member communities in other Regional Research and Education networks.

How do you think global collaboration among regional networks will change in the coming years?
We live in an environment where disruptive changes as a result of new technologies impact how people live, work and play in ways not anticipated even a few years ago.  It is unlikely that this pace will slow.

Most of these disruptive technologies no longer result from the publicly funded research sector.  There are new challenges for the R&E networking community and closer collaboration, and exploiting new developments wherever they occur will be important for the future.

Inter-regional network collaboration will increase. High-end science instruments that are enormously expensive to build and operate, will only be located in a small number of sites around the world.  Research collaborations will increasingly be built around global teams funded by multiple agencies in different countries. Virtual environments will become the norm for the globally distributed collaborations, supported by the global R&E Network mesh.

Could you describe your vision of R&E networks in the future.
In the past the expertise within the R&E community was, in most cases, well in advance of the commercial sector.  That is no longer the case.  We have been focussed (largely) on terrestrial, cable and fibre network, while the commercial world and the user communities are moving to high throughput mobile environments. The pace of change continues to increase.  In order to remain relevant, the organisations responsible for R&E networking will have to be highly adaptive, respond rapidly to change, and importantly engage closely with their user communities to determine how they can best exploit the changes to benefit their users and their collaborations.