MURPA Program wins US Award

The MURPA program is the recipient of the 2010 Innovations in Networking Award in the category of High Performance Research Applications. Specifically, the Award is for the project "Enhancing Student Exchange Experiences with High Definition Video Conference".

The award has been made by the organizing committee for the CENIC 2010 confeence, Full Speed Ahead. CENIC is the Corporation for Education network Initiatives in California.

Prof Abramson accepted the award in person on March 9 in Monterey and made a presentation.

Award Ceremony 9 March plus related Press

Streaming videos - low and high res of Award Ceremony 

Calit2 Newsroom March 9 

Yahoo Finance 

The project overview provided by Prof Abramson, Peter Arzberger UC San Diego and Gabriele Wienhausen UC San Diego as part of the submission was

We have implemented a high definition, low latency, video link between Monash University in Australia and the University of California in San Diego. The link supports two novel student exchange schemes: PRIME and MURPA, where students travel over summer months to engage in research internships. Video supports collaborative seminars where both students, and their mentors, present work, both prior to the students' departure for UCSD or Monash and during the internships. In 2008 and 2009 we ran a complete semester of mentor seminars, and also supported final presentations from the students. The technology has been transformative and enabled collaborations that would not have been possible previously.

In the conclusions, the submission noted, amongst other things

In today's educational arena, we must provide students with opportunities to work/study abraod to prepare them for global citizenship and professional competence in a multicultural workplace. Numerous reports have challennged universities to develop educational programs that provide an integrated academic basis for developing stuudents' cultural/global competencies.

We believe PRIME and MURPA fill a need of many students, for example those who cannot take a long break from their studies, those that want research experience, those who want the challenge and opportunity to live and work in an international setting. Our use of high bandwidth video conference technology has had a profound influence on these programs.