In its early years, the Academy performed several Provost-funded developmental activities at the Institute for Biosciences and Technology (IBT) in Houston’s Texas Medical Center. These included:
The ARIES Project
This joint NASA/industry/Academy project demonstrated moving 10+ TByte data sets from seismic vessels using the NASA ACTS research satellite.
INTERNET2
The Academy led within A&M and within Texas in several aspects of Internet2. This included obtaining an NSF award for connecting A&M to the vBNS and later Abilene network and then partnering with Rice, UH, and BCoM to create the first Texas gigapop.
IBT DEVELOPMENT
The Academy contributed to developing the IBT’s IT capabilities, organized private fiber among the IBT and the other Texas Medical Center (TMC) members, and wrote proposals leading to over $2M in IBT resources.
TEXAS A&M HEALTH SCIENCE CENTER (HSC)
Between 1999 and 2003, the Academy coordinated the HSC’s IT activities and obtained and administered about $4M in external funding.
More recently, the Academy has developed an exciting and diverse set of interdisciplinary collaborative projects.
TEXAS GIGAPOP EVOLVES TO LEARN
The Houston Gigapop became the Texas Gigapop and was incorporated as a 501(c)3. Finally, the Lonestar Education and Research Network was formed using the Texas Gigapop structure. LEARN is one of the country’s largest regional optical networks.
DISASTER RELIEF AND EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICES (DREAMS™)
An Army-funded $38M, eight year, joint project with the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and TEES, which pioneered the direct connection of sensors and EMS personnel within a rapidly moving ambulance with the Emergency Room to improve trauma victims’ survival.
TEXAS TRAINING & TECHNOLOGY AGAINST TRAUMA & TERRORISM (T5)
This follow-on project adapted DREAMS™ technology to an emergency helicopter setting.
SURA COASTAL OCEAN OBSERVING PROGRAM (SCOOP)
SCOOP was a collaborative project of the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA), which prototyped an enhanced environment for doing coastal science by providing access to large computing and storage resources and visualization tools.
EDUCAUSE
Academy was involved with Internet2/ESnet Joint Technical Meetings, and EDUCAUSE ACTI Working Group on Campus Cyberinfrastructure (CCIWG), which led to a joint EDUCAUSE/CASC report, “Developing a Coherent Cyberinfrastructure from Local Campus to National Facilities: Challenges and Strategies” (2009) and to the EDUCAUSE reports on “Big Data in the Campus Landscape: … ” (2015).