What’s Going On Around the World? 5 International Sessions at the 2024 Community Exchange You Won’t Want to Miss

What are our colleagues at GÉANT up to these days in Europe? Find out Tuesday, March 5, when Tom Fryer, head of international relations at GÉANT, presents the session Collaboration: The Heart of Global Research.

GÉANT interconnects Europe’s national research and education networks (NRENs) and plays a role in providing network solutions to R&E institutions. As such, GÉANT collaborates with many national R&E networks across the continent to ensure the seamless delivery of end-to-end services.

Fryer covers many timely topics, including inter-regional connectivity, new developments in security provisioning, and updates on the development of new NRENs across Europe. 

Learn more about the massive collaboration efforts underway across Europe, with key information shared about working groups and collaboration groups that may be of relevance to you.

Representatives from Internet2 and the Minority Serving – Cyberinfrastructure Consortium (MS-CC), RedCLARA, and CANARIE come together to discuss how each organization works to connect traditionally underserved communities and institutions. 

Listen in on the panel at the Connecting the Unconnected on Tuesday, March 5, to hear about projects currently underway to achieve these goals in Canada, Latin America, and the U.S.

Learn how the three organizations are leading efforts to connect the unconnected — from research institutions in Patagonia to tribal colleges and historically Black colleges and universities in the U.S., to remote communities in the Nunavut territory of Canada.

On Tuesday, March 5, at Global Network Advancement with GNA-G, the Global Network Advancement Group (GNA-G) leads a conversation with information on how R&E network professionals can contribute to its myriad working groups year-round. Ivana Golub, senior researcher with the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center, and David Wilde, CTO of Australia’s Academic and Research Network, lead the session.

The GNA-G is comprised of network professionals, and its mission is driven by global collaborative working groups. These working groups cover many different topics, and some subjects to be discussed during this session include data intensive science, routing, GREN Map, and network automation.

Swing by this session to learn more about working groups that may be specific to your field or interests, and how you can join and participate in those working groups. This session also provides a unique opportunity to network with GNA-G members face-to-face.

Pop in for a crash course on the Programmable Future Internet for Secure Software Architecture (PROFISSA) on Wednesday, March 6, at the Secure and Programmable Future Internet session. This presentation is led by Lucas Bondan, a research and development coordinator with Rede Nacional de Ensino e Pesquisa, and Marcelo Antonio Marotta, a professor in computer science at the Universidade de Brasília.

The PROFISSA project, launched in 2021, provides an applicable code framework for contemporary programmable networks with the stated goal of documenting and advancing the use of relevant software engineering techniques in the field.

Throughout this session, learn about network architecture developed with the PROFISSA project and use cases currently under development. Further, attendees have the opportunity to discuss potential integrations of the PROFISSA testbed with FABRIC.

Some of our colleagues from Canada lead a presentation on how NREN partners across the country collaborate to build a federated cybersecurity defense for Canada’s R&E networks. On Wednesday, March 6, the session Stronger Together: A Federated Approach covers three key ways CANARIE and Canada’s regional NRENs work together to evolve with the changing landscape of threats to R&E institutions.

Topics covered include CANARIE’s Cybersecurity Initiatives Program and the National Cybersecurity Assessment, which assesses NREN-connected organizations to identify actionable tasks at regional and national levels. 

Plus, learn about the efforts underway to establish a security operations center in a federated model that utilizes existing talent, infrastructure, and processes to deliver capabilities that individual organizations may not be able to run on their own.