Wednesday, May 8, 2002

Worldwide Universities Network Seeks to Foster Online Collaboration By DAN CARNEVALE Officials of an international group of universities hope online collaboration will improve their research capabilities and, in turn, lead to discoveries. The nonprofit group, Worldwide Universities Network, is undertaking research on various topics, including nanotechnology -- manipulating materials at the atomic level to create electronics -- and the use of technology to study weather patterns. The network came together in April 2001 with 11 institutions from the United States and Britain, including Pennsylvania State University and the University of York. Last month, the organization added two Chinese institutions to its roster, the Universities of Nanjing and Zhejiang. The universities finance most of the organization's activities. Each institution has paid a one-time fee of $50,000 to join the network. Network officials are also seeking outside funds from government and private entities. For example, Sun Microsystems paid the network $500,000 for help developing a software program to administer online courses. Participating institutions focused mostly on technology research and distance-education programs in the beginning, but the organization is expanding to include research in other areas, such as the arts and humanities. David Pilsbury, chief executive of the network, says the universities provide the research experts and the network brings them together. "WUN seeks to create an infrastructure to seek and sustain collaboration," he says. Much of the collaboration is conducted online and through interactive videos. Researchers also hold old-fashioned conferences and seminars, and exchange programs allow students to stay at one another's campuses and help conduct research. Robert T. McGrath, associate vice president for research at Penn State, says the universities in the network have been working on similar projects. Participation in the network helps the institutions surmount bureaucratic difficulties and collaborate efficiently, he says. Penn State is working with British institutions in the network to improve materials for wireless applications and to create memory alloys, materials that change shape under different temperatures and voltages, for acoustic sciences. "You have strong universities with overlapping interests coming together," Mr. McGrath says. "It provides the opportunity for research teams to work together that are in fact stronger than individual universities could put together." The students who travel to England get opportunities to work with top-notch research projects while learning about a foreign culture, he says. "It broadens their horizons on multiple fronts," he says. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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