The National Science Foundation on Monday announced a $2.2 milliongrant to the University at Buffalo for fellowships in the boomingfield of geographic information sciences.
With the funding, UB will offer 18 doctoral fellowships worth$15,000 a year in seven departments.
David Mark, a geography professor at UB, said "there is anincreasing demand for researchers" in this field and growing demandfor faculty familiar with geographic information sciences.
A second foundation grant announced Monday -- for $350,000 -- willmake it possible for UB soon to be hooked into the Backbone NetworkService, a fiber-optic communication system that parallels theThruway.
The high-speed data network ties together the super-computingsites in the country, said Hinrich R. Martens, UB associate vicepresident for computing and information technology.
The connection is expected to be ready by next spring.
The two-year grant making this possible is UB's share of a $1.75million award to a consortium of research universities in the stateknown as NYSERNet.
A subgroup of NYSERNet, including UB, Columbia University,University of Rochester, New York University and the RochesterInstitute of Technology, received the $1.75 million award allowingthe institutions to hook into the service.
The high-speed network is a crucial component of PresidentClinton's Next Generation Internet, or Internet 2 -- a new networkbeing developed by a consortium of 134 universities to supportresearch and other activities, Martens noted.
The Backbone Network Service has been called the "fabric" thatweaves Internet 2 universities together, according to UB networkengineer Jerry Bucklaew, UB's representative to the state Educationand Research Network.
"The Internet today is slow," he said. "If you want to do inter
active things or live things, voice or video-conferencing in realtime, you need greater bandwidth and quality of service."
Internet 2 is a must for UB "to retain and maintain the viabilityof the university," Martens said.
"We believe we will have applications and research projects thatwe wouldn't be able to carry out without the capability of Internet2," he noted.
"We need it in order to maintain our competitive position toattract faculty, to attract research and to be a 'name' institutionthat will also be attractive to undergraduate students."
UB qualified as a top-level research institution in applying forthe Backbone connection by citing projects of such UB centers as theMultidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research, theCenter for High Performance Computing and the Center of Excellencefor Document Analysis and Recognition.
UB officials said nearly every student with geographic informationservice skills, even at the undergraduate level, gets a job.
Already at UB, researchers are using geographic informationservices to develop suburban deer management and analyze patterns ofcrime and problems in caring for the elderly when family members livefar away.
The science foundation made awards to only 16 applicants out of630.
The university said the program starts with the fall term in 1999.
"In terms of the breadth of our offerings and the number offaculty involved in geographic information science," Mark said, "UBis easily among the top 10 universities in the U.S."
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