The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) will host a Higher Education Technology Conference on Friday, Dec. 7, 2001, to address future technological needs of the nation’s colleges and universities.

The conference, co-sponsored by Oracle Corporation and Atrium Communications, Inc., will feature lectures by top researchers and technologists. The event will be held on campus (in the Erik Jonsson Building, Room 4.614), transmitted over UTD’s network for desktop viewing and made available via “real-time” streaming video to other universities in the United States with Internet2 access through the Alliance for Higher Education.

“The challenges facing higher education institutions have never been more pressing,” said UTD President Dr. Franklyn G. Jenifer. “In order to prosper, institutions will have to make prudent investments in technology to advance their research, instructional and community-service obligations. We look to this conference to provide Texas educators and administrators, as well as our colleagues throughout the nation, with an understanding of the state of technology and the direction in which it is moving.”

John W. Wookey, Oracle’s senior vice president of applications development, will be the conference’s keynote speaker. Wookey, also one of Oracle’s chief technologists, will discuss “Continuing and Emerging Trends in Technology.”

“It is becoming increasingly clear to entities in both the public and private sectors that timely and accurate information gathering, manipulation and analysis is one of the most important factors in determining organizational success,” said Wookey. “This conference will outline both the tools and techniques that may be employed to organize and use mission-critical information. ”

Wookey also noted that in keeping with the conference’s theme, the agenda will address specific technology applications such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, pre- and post-award grants management, application service providers and electronic commerce.

Dr. Da Hsuan Feng, vice president for research and graduate education and professor of physics at UTD, said, “The conference will provide overviews of active research projects that are utilizing applied information technologies to achieve their objectives.”

Researchers who will address the conference include:

  • Dr. Roderick A. Heelis, director of the William B. Hanson Center for Space Science and chairman of the UTD Department of Physics.
  • Dr. Edwin Sha, head of the UTD Computer Science Division.
  • Dr. James Murdoch, director of the Bruton Center and dean of the School of Social Sciences at UTD.

“The University of Texas at Dallas is known for technology, and it is only appropriate that a conference that showcases the latest technology use the latest technology as a medium,” said David Alexander, vice president for North American operations at Atrium Communications. “The use of VideoCast for intra- and extra-campus communication of the conference’s proceedings brings the benefits of this meeting to higher education administrators across the nation who otherwise would not have been able to participate. UTD’s aggressive commitment to advanced technologies, like the VideoCast system, will leverage the university’s ability to promote its role and mission.”

The real-time video of the conference will be available to more than 187 institutions nationwide thanks to equipment and services provided by Atrium Communications and the Alliance for Higher Education.

The conference will accommodate approximately 150 on-site participants and will make the proceedings available via streaming video to 100 desktop viewers within its campus and to all institutions with Interenet2 access. Both on-site and off-site participants must register for the conference at http://www.utdallas.edu/%7Eahimam/Oracle/index.html.

The conference is free and open to the public.

About Oracle Corporation

Oracle Corporation is the world’s largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, visit the Oracle Web site at http://www.oracle.com/.

About Atrium Communications

Atrium Communications is a provider of business improvement solutions that impact individual and organizational performance by delivering corporate communications and learning to the desktop. Atrium Communication’s VideoCast and Presenter products are delivered through advanced video and network systems directly to the user’s desktop. With these products, high-quality training, real-time news and corporate information can be distributed non-invasively and cost effectively over corporate networks. Clients include Cable & Wireless, Ericsson, Fujitsu-ICL, Reuters, The University of Texas at Dallas, Kingston Media Stream and many more. Atrium Communications is headquartered in the United Kingdom with North American headquarters in Dallas, Texas. For more information on Atrium Communications, visit www.atriumcom.com.

About the Alliance for Higher Education

The Alliance for Higher Education is a 37-year old non-profit distance education and research technology transport organization located in the new high-tech Center near The University of Texas at Dallas. The Alliance is one of only two GigaPoPs, or points of presence, for Internet2 in Texas and 28 in the United States.

The bandwidth available through participation in the Alliance GigaPoP will provide universities, K-12, corporations, libraries, hospitals, and others almost unlimited capacity to move vast quantities of data for research and distance education internationally. The Alliance connection to Abilene provides high performance network services that enable advanced applications such as HDTV, tele-medicine, and remote access to scientific instruments.

For more information about the Alliance GigaPoP, see: http://www.allianceedu.org.

About Internet2

Internet2 is developing and deploying advanced network applications and technologies for research and higher education, accelerating the creation of tomorrow’s Internet. Internet2 recreates the partnership of academia, industry and government that helped foster today’s Internet in its infancy. For more information about Internet2, see: http://www.internet2.edu/.

About UTD

The University of Texas at Dallas, located at the convergence of Richardson, Plano and Dallas in the heart of the complex of major multinational technology corporations known as the Telecom Corridor, enrolls more than 7,000 undergraduate and 5,000 graduate students. The school’s freshman class traditionally stands at the forefront of Texas state universities in terms of average SAT scores. The university offers a broad assortment of bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs. For additional information about UTD, please visit the university’s Web site at http://www.utdallas.edu/.