BRUSSELS - HE Dr. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, Chairman of the Arab States Research and Education Network (ASREN) stressed, during the CHAIN-REDS Conference entitled “Open Science at the Global Scale: Sharing e-Infrastructures, Sharing Knowledge, Sharing Progress” held in Brussels, Belgium, on the continuous support of the European Commission to ASREN's efforts in developing pan-Arab e-Infrastructure towards technical and scientific prosperity
The conference, organized under the aegis of the European Commission (DG CONNECT), brought together around 60 participants, including policy-makers; officials, researchers, and industry stakeholders from Asia, Africa, Arabia, India, Europe and Latin America. The objective is to discuss major developments and perspectives in the field of global e-Infrastructures for Research and Education.
In his keynote address, Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh highlighted ASREN’s role in providing its users with services, applications, and means for joint research collaboration and allowing for a wider access to educational content and efficient computing facilities.
“Since 2011, ASREN has been actively involved in a number of EC funded projects, mainly in the context of Coordination and Harmonization of Advanced e-Infrastructures (CHAIN and CHAIN-REDS). These projects have laid down the foundation for the interoperation of platforms for seamless access of resources, facilities, and repositories,” he addressed the attendees.
With the financial support of Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization and patronage of the League of Arab States, ASREN has become the Pan-Arab network infrastructure with nodes emerging in London and the Emirates. Its goal is to continue to expand and connect all Arab research and education institutions in a unified network that provides scientists, academics, students, and researchers with state-of-the-art connectivity and networking services”.
He also revealed some future plans: “Setup “Arab Connect” Cable Ring linking Arab institutions through ASREN PoP in London and peering them with GEANT, Internet2, and other regional RENs at the global scale”.
About ASREN
Arab States Research and Education Network (ASREN) is the association of the Arab region National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) and strategic partners, that aims to implement, manage and extend sustainable Pan-Arab e-Infrastructures dedicated for the Research and Education communities and to boost scientific research and cooperation in member countries through the provision of world-class e-Infrastructures and E-services.
About CHAIN-REDS
CHAIN-REDS is a FP7 project co-funded by the European Commission (DG CONNECT) aiming at promoting and supporting technological and scientific collaboration across different e-Infrastructures established and operated in various continents, in order to define a path towards a global e-Infrastructure ecosystem that will allow Virtual Research Communities (VRCs), research groups and even single researchers to access and efficiently use worldwide distributed resources (i.e., computing, storage, data, services, tools, applications).
