Speaker: Yousef Torman, Managing Director, ASREN, Jordan
“For around thirty years, I worked in ICT at highly reputable institutions in the higher education and scientific research sector. During my work, my main focus was to make use of technology, mainly ICT, for the developments and enhancing the life of people in my community and beyond through better use of new technologies in education and scientific research”.
In 1989, I started my work as Engineer at the Computer Center of Jordan University for Science and Technology being responsible for establishing the campus network and installing high end main servers and managing the students and academics computing and services environments services.
In 1999, I had successfully established and managed the New Computer and Information Center at Jordan University of Science and Technology and was promoted as the Director of that Center. At that time, we served around 16000 students, 3500 faculty and staff member through advanced infrastructure and wide range of services beyond campus borders.
In 2005, and at the national level, I established and managed the Jordanian National Research and Education Network (Jordanian Universities Network (JUNet) serving 11 Universities with more than 250000 students and 25000 faculty and staff members all were connected to the national and global research and education networks.
In 2012, and at the regional level, I played a prominent and key role in the efforts and initiatives that aimed to establish a Pan Arab regional e-Infrastructure for education scientific research for a long time. These efforts were concluded by the establishment of the Arab States Research and Education Network – ASREN – for which I am currently the Managing Director. Hoping to serve hundreds of Universities in the Arab Region and to connect them with the other regional and global research and education networks to enable collaboration and facilitate access to educational and research resources and services around the world.
Ambition
I strongly believe that the only way to develop the research and education and enhance our communities and life of people in our countries is by using the new technologies rather than going traditional. Therefore, my focus and ambition now is to help in providing the appropriate communication networks and tools to the Arab research and education community.
This can be achieved by establishing dedicated national and regional research and education networks. It has been realized globally that it is very necessary to establish dedicated networks with advanced communication and collaboration tools, computing services and applications to the research and education communities at both, national and international levels. This will provide comprehensive environment to the researchers to extend their research and collaboration beyond their labs and lecture halls.
