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Manager of the Projects  CAREN, EUMEDCONNECT3 and TEIN3, David West shares in this interview his visions regarding the future of research and education networks and the importance of global collaboration, opening with his answers a cycle in which RedCLARA will try to find out which are the views of the advanced networks leaders in these matters.

What comes to your mind when you hear that a researcher is talking about collaboration?
This increasingly seems to be the way research is heading – it has been said before, but with science becoming mega science, and laboratories becoming ‘collaboratories,’ connection to research facilities around the world is vital. I would want researchers to know that there are eInfrastructures available to them now wherever they are, to help them collaborate on a global scale.

What would you identify as the main importance of research and education networks?
By providing dedicated bandwidth, research and education networks enable researchers to share knowledge quickly and easily. For the scientist, connection to a research and education network can manifest itself as videoconference that is crystal clear, or an uninterrupted tele-surgery session, or the ability to participate in large-scale experiments. The commercial internet cannot provide such reliable and cost-effective data transfer. Without research and education networks, researchers in developing regions would be less able to participate in important international research efforts, and in some cases not participate at all. For governments research networks have become essential infrastructure for national and regional development.

How would you describe the role of CAREN, EUMEDCONNECT3 and TEIN3 at both a regional and a global level?
Within a geographic region, there may be shared research objectives and interests – for instance, in central Asia, where CAREN operates, research priorities include Earth observation to mitigate the effects of natural disasters, or the surveillance of certain local diseases. However, increasingly the view becomes global - we know that malaria research is being conducted internationally, as a disease that affects many regions worldwide. Similarly crop research, and so these regional networks must, and do, link into global networks also.

How important for CAREN, EUMEDCONNECT3 and TEIN3 is collaboration with other regional networks and in what ways do they collaborate at a global level?
All the networks mentioned here link into GÉANT, the pan-European network and so there is the potential for region-to-region collaboration. One specific example we identified recently is that land management researchers in North Africa needed to transfer large satellite images to specialist facilities in France for processing before being returned, and they used the connections of EUMEDCONNECT3 and GÉANT to do so. There are many more case study examples which can be found by looking at the regional websites: www.tein3.net. www.eumedconnect3.net and www.caren.dante.net.


How do you think global collaboration among regional networks will change in the coming years?
I see that it will continue to intensify as further countries join regional network programmes, as network capacities increase and as science and research demand ubiquitous access to resources and data globally. I believe this is an irreversible trend with great benefits for all which will help developing countries participate on an equal footing in international research collaboration.

Could you describe your vision of R&E networks in the future.
I think R&E networks will continue to advance in capacity and capability ahead of the commercial services to provide researchers with services that increase the security, accessibility and manageability of the users’ experience of the network. Increasingly additional resources will be available through the R&E network cloud: some developed in-house within the R&E community, others using best of breed commercial applications.  While the base unit of R&E networking will continue to be the national level, regional level inter-working and network development will become increasingly important in other world regions, as it is already is in Europe.