NORDUNet (European Nordic)

The Up2University project helps school-aged students prepare for university by making the technology and the methodology that students most likely will be facing at universities available to the secondary school level.

Observations from the “Internet of things”, such as intelligent cars, phones, buildings and personal weather stations added to the mix can provide detailed information on local to hyper-local meteorological phenomena.

Researchers from across Europe are hard at work developing a robot that autonomously roams a greenhouse, “eye-balling” sweet peppers to check if they have reached optimal ripeness, and then plucks them off the plant and places them in a vat – all automatically.

For the first time, air pollution from individual cities and built-up areas can be detected from space. The European Sentinel-5 Precursor Earth observation satellite sends ultra precise measurement data to ground stations in Norway and Canada.

As cyber attacks increase steadily in frequency and scale, the importance of defending ones own network against attackers increases as well. That is why many R&E networks have a Computer Emergency Response Team, CERT, to handle security incidents.

Free Wi-Fi is a luxury we have come to expect at cafes, airports, on commuter trains or in the hotel we are staying at. But are you actually aware of how vulnerable you are when you are using a public Wi-Fi hotspot?

Research & Education networks go where their customers go. So, while research and education grows increasingly global, networks do the same. One recent example is the prestigious Swedish Karolinska Institute’s opening of its first hub outside Sweden, the Ming Wai Lau Centre for Reparative Medicine in Hong Kong.

For volcanologists and seismologists Iceland is the world’s volcanic laboratory, where they try out new, data-intensive monitoring and early warning technologies, to help save lives and livelihoods in all parts of the world threatened by volcanic eruptions.

Engineers used research networks and supercomputing in two countries to inform the design of airplane wings that will make airplanes lighter, reducing fuel consumption and the number of raw materials used in construction

A music and dance performance in Copenhagen included live feeds of musicians in London and dancers in Barcelona. Thanks to LOLA technology the synchronised effect was as if they were all physically present on the same stage.

Helina Emeru is chief technology officer of Ethiopian research and education network EthERnet. In October 2016, she joined 9 colleagues from around the world at the NORDUnet conference as part of a new Knowledge Exchange Fellowship program.

The Nordic research and education networks are preparing to put a whole new network infrastructure in place for EISCAT 3D, as the powerful new radar is situated in remote northern Scandinavia to assure a minimum of background noise. For the next 35 to 40 years to come, it will be the centerpiece of the international network of instruments monitoring the Earth’s upper atmosphere and space environment.