LehighWeek Volume 12, Issue 04

              Il
A summer in London
See page 3
LehiehWeek
Athletics Update
Lehigh beats St. Mary's
See SouthMountaineer
Volume 12, Issue 4
The campus digest for innovation, news and events with SouthMountaineer
September 22,1998
NSF funds
Internet2
K3I
Lehigh will receive a $350,000
grant from the National Science
Foundation to support the annual operating cost of a highspeed network connection to the Internet2
backbone. Internet2 is
the major national effort
to create the next generation of very high
speed transmission and
the networking capacity
that will allow scientists
and engineers to collect
and share vast amounts
of data, collabbrate better across large distances, and run complex
equipment remotely.
Internet2's sophisticated telecommunications network runs at
622 million bits per second and has begun a
transition to operation at 2.4 gigabits per second. By comparison, the average home modem
operates from 28,800 to 56,600
kilobits per second.
"Lehigh is a leader in several
scientific areas, and the
Internet2 project will enable us
to share that expertise and more
effectively collaborate with
many other universities," said
Arnold Hirshon, vice provost
for Information Resources.
"Lehigh is committed to providing high-performance computing
and network services in support
of science and engineering, and
has begun expanding its infrastructure to complement
Internet2."
Hirshon said that during the
first year (1998-99), the funding
would be used to establish the
connection to the backbone. Additional university funds will be
used to upgrade the existing
campus backbone to permit
transmission of the higher bandwidth required for I2-level transactions, and to upgrade some
desktop connections. For 1999-
2000, the major costs will be to
maintain the connection to the
NSF backbone network, and to
expand backbone upgrades to
extend Internet2 to additional
locations on campus.
There are three initial applications at Lehigh in which 12-
level activities will be concentrated and that require very
high speed bandwidth:
The Remote Access Digital
Imaging and Analysis Laboratory (RADIAL) will provide distant access by national researchers to the unique collection of
advanced electron microscopy
equipment at Lehigh and will
permit Lehigh students and researchers to use facilities at
other locations.
"Sharing such tools in a col-
Please see Internet2 on page 2
Lehigh receives $1.2 million grant
from Howard Hughes Medical Institute
For Williamson Lecture story,  see page 2
Illustration by Marvin H. Simmons
LEHIGH
University
LehighWeefe
Office of Communications/Design
422 Brodhead Avenue
Bethlehem, Pa. 18015-3067
MARIE   C.
INFO   RES
RM.306
LINDERMAN
80LTZ
CLIENT
SERVICES
LIBRARY
NO.030
V&t
The Howard Hughes
Medical Institute
(HHMI) has awarded
Lehigh a $1.2 million
Undergraduate Biological Sciences Education
grant to complete new
teaching laboratories,
fund undergraduate research and expand pre-
college science outreach
programs.
Lehigh is one of 58
major universities to receive a grant from
HHMI, the total of
which is $91.1 million
nationwide. This is the
third grant Lehigh has
received from HHMI, bringing
the total received to $3.7 million
since 1989. During this time,
nearly a thousand Lehigh undergraduates, and several thousands of pre-college students in
the Lehigh Valley have had
valuable research and educational experiences funded by
this program.
Jeffrey Sands, professor of
molecular biology, will continue
in his role as director of the
Lehigh-Hughes program, a position he has held since 1989.
"Lehigh is extremely fortunate to receive this third grant.
This makes it clear that we have
made a favorable impression
upon the people at HHMI
through the programs we've
been running, " Sands said.
The first component of the
new grant will allow the completion of the Hughes Bioscience
Center, a suite of new labs and
modules for undergraduate
courses and research located on
the first floor of Iacocca Hall. Biology lab courses will become
more research-project based,
providing students with a major
step into the biology research
world of the 21sl century.
"Students should go out into
the world feeling as though they
have been in a bio research environment. Through the grant,
we can give them something
more along the lines of what
they will encounter in the real
world," Sands said.
The second part of the program will fund individual undergraduate research in biological
sciences by juniors and seniors.
Many of the previous participants in the program over the
past five years have gone on to
professional or doctoral programs. The grant will also provide research opportunities for
minority students from small
colleges in eastern Pennsylvania.
Please see Hughes on page 2
NON-PROFIT MAIL
U.S. Postage Paid
Permit No. 230
Bethlehem, Pa. 18015