Connecting Arkansas goes live

Editor’s note: The following article first appeared in TBQ, a Little Rock-based publication highlighting business and politic news in Arkansas.

story by Michael Tilley

Mike Abbiatti has little respect or patience for governments at any level that promise big things with big technology but provide big disappointment to taxpayers.

He’s even less impressed with academic bureaucracy that intentionally or inadvertently obstructs collaborative attempts to connect university research and programs with real world practicalities possessing the potential to boost socio-economic opportunities for individuals, regions and states.

What’s more, Abbiatti — a former Army colonel, graduate of the prestigious Army War College and former captain of the University of Arkansas track team — is wholly opposed to installing expensive high-tech tools without first having a solid plan that makes the best use of those tools.

Or so he says.

And so Arkansans should hope is true, because Abbiatti is one of a handful of people in the state responsible for construction and use of an electronic network designed to connect 11 Arkansas universities so the state may gain equal footing in the global competition for research and development and the commercialization of such R&D. With 40 other states already having a similar network in place, Arkansas’ research and development efforts through the universities will need the equal footing just to catch up.

Abbiatti is executive director of the Arkansas Research and Education Optical Network, or ARE•ON, for short.

BIG DEAL
ARE-ON, according to spokesman Ben Beaumont, “is a consortium of research and education institutions and public service agencies that was formed to foster the development of Arkansas’ research, education, public service and economic development.”

What’s that mean, and why do we care?

It means, for example, that a large fiber-optic cable with the capacity to push 10 gigabits of information — which is 10 billion bits of information pulsing through the fiber at almost 186,000 miles per second — could connect researchers at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock to a supercomputer anywhere in the world.

Big deal, right? Well, yes, in fact, when considering that the supercomputer would allow the UAMS researchers to run thousands of simulations through the supercomputer a day instead of in weeks; and that such expedited simulations would greatly increase the pace of research into cures or enhanced treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s or any number of other atrocious afflictions.

Arkansas-based businesses marketing or manufacturing the new drugs and treatments could emerge from the research. Thousands, if not millions of people, would flock to Little Rock for such treatments. Move over, Mayo.

That is not a pie-in-the-sky scenario, according to Abbiatti and ARE•ON Chief Technology Officer David Merrifield. That access, Merrifield said, will do much to put UAMS researchers on the same level as the best medical research institutions in the world.

It also means researchers at Arkansas Tech University in Russellville could use the same supercomputer connections to develop advanced emergency preparedness procedures. This research could result in the relatively small Arkansas town of about 26,000 being a global center for the training of emergency management personnel. It could result in the creation of numerous Arkansas-based businesses that employ thousands who fan out around the globe to provide emergency management consulting to state and national governments.

The Russellville scenario also is not a pie-in-the-sky scenario.

“The important part of ARE•ON is not the network. The important part is what we do with it,” Abbiatti said during a Feb. 27 interview. “Time and location is no longer an issue … And it won’t be an issue. What is possible (outside Arkansas) with respect to research and what can be (converted into economic development/jobs) from the research is now possible right here.”

JOB-CREATING RESEARCH
Reinforcing Abbiatti’s point is an Arkansas Research Alliance report released April 2 that outlines the Why and How of pursuing opportunities to foster job-creating research in Arkansas.

Conducted by the Cleveland-based Battelle Technology Partnership Practice for the ARA, the report noted that between 2001 to 2007, Arkansas university research grew 70% from $141 million to $240 million. This U.S. rate of growth was 51% in that period.

But Arkansas falls short when compared to the percentage of research dollars compared to GDP. Arkansas spends 0.25% of state GDP on university research. The national average is 0.36%. It would take a $106 million annual increase (more than 44% now being spent in Arkansas) to get Arkansas’ percentage to the national average, according to Battelle.

“No longer do state and regional economies compete on the basis of costs alone, which underpinned Arkansas’ prior successful economic development focus,” the Battelle report noted. “Today, the driving factors in economic competition are the knowledge and skills of a state and region’s workforce and the breadth and quality of its technology base.

Areas in which the Battelle report said Arkansas officials might consider injecting more research dollars include enterprise systems computing, optics and photonics, sustainable agriculture and bioenergy and nano-related materials and applications.

TURNING ARE•ON ON
But the physical component of the network, obviously, is important, and Abbiatti and Merrifield are confident the 11 universities will be connected by the end of 2009.

The first phase of the effort —funded when then-Gov. Mike Huckabee pushed $6.4 million from the state’s general improvement fund — saw the creation of ARE•ON as an organization and connected the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville to the “backbone” of national and international research and education networks. The networks are often referred to as the “Lambda Rail” and “Internet2.” This phase is complete.

Phase II, now underway, involves connecting the other 10 universities to the national backbones, installing the necessary equipment at each university and turning it on, so to speak. This phase was funded with $10 million from the $250 million education and research bond package approved by Arkansas voters November 2006.

Staffing the organization and providing extra funds for first year operations were part of Phase III, with the approximately $2 million a year coming from mineral lease rights allocated from presidents and chancellors of the universities connected to ARE•ON.

MOBILE OFFICE
ARE•ON is the third project of this size for Abbiatti. He had a lead role in two efforts that created similar research-oriented connections among 70 Louisiana universities and colleges. He traveled that state in a 38-foot Class A recreational vehicle.

“That was my mobile office,” Abbiatti said of the RV. “So, I’m going to do the same thing here (in Arkansas).”

The mobile office points to a perceived Abbiatti character trait: control.

That’s not at all a bad thing, but it was evident during the interview that he believes this complex and expensive technological project that carries such high expectations requires little to no filters between him and the process. Abbiatti has a small but experienced staff of which he speaks highly, but he’ll nevertheless literally park his “office” on each campus to ensure that the big ideas on the conference-room flipcharts are converted to reality.

That type of control is expected, really, from a former Army colonel who has a history of being in charge — including those early university days as a track team captain. Not only was that control evident during a 90-minute interview, it was appreciated because Abbiatti made perfectly clear the key points necessary to understand the fundamentals and factors for ARE•ON success.

Those key points are:
ARE•ON is not a competitor with private sector telecoms like AT&T, Cox Communications, Comcast and CenturyTel.
“In fact, we’ll probably make money for them … as the research and some of the spin-off from this drives more use of that (private-sector broadband),” Abbiatti explained.

ARE•ON will be successful if the university presidents, chancellors and staff continue to work together. Abbiatti said the different levels of academic bureaucracy (silos) have not discouraged collaboration.
“The silos that have come down on university campuses have been remarkable,” he said. “And I think that will continue. It must continue, frankly, for this to work.”

Each university must maintain an active “leadership team” focused on maximizing the use of ARE•ON at their respective institution. Several of the leadership teams have toured high-speed research and education operations and physical connections Abbiatti helped build in Louisiana. The most recent trip included teams from The University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, University of Arkansas at Monticello and the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.

FOUR CORE AGENDAS
ARE•ON will be an electronic pipe dream if university officials, administrators of the network and elected officials don’t adhere to a strict adherence of what Abbiatti repeatedly referred to as “the four core agendas.”

In no particular order, the four agendas are:
• Research Agenda: To provide Arkansas universities the capacity to pursue “high-order” research grants from the Department of Energy, Department of Defense, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and other large federal agencies that annually award billions of dollars in research grants;

• Academic Agenda: Allow Arkansas universities to compete with universities all around the country for the best and brightest students who choose an institution based on access to serious computing tools.

• Medical Agenda: As noted earlier, ARE•ON must allow UAMS and other universities in Arkansas to conduct the type of research into medicines and procedures that Arkansas hospitals and clinics of all sizes can use to improve outcomes for their patients.

• Emergency Agenda: And in case of emergency, break into emergency preparedness research conducted at Arkansas Tech University.

Seriously.

EMERGENCY TECH
With the help of James Lee Witt, former Yell County Judge and former head of the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), ATU formed in 1997 a bachelor’s degree program in emergency administration and management. A masters of science in emergency management and homeland security was added in 2006.

According to Ed Leachman, interim department head for Emergency Administration Management at ATU, the program graduated at least 250 since inception, and now graduates between 40 and 50 each year from the undergraduate program. Witt, a globally recognized figure in the world of emergency management consulting, checks in on the program several times a year, Leachman said.

The issue at ATU is that the program — one of just a few in the country — is a victim of its own success. The problem, succinctly, is that the more people learn about emergency situations, the more factors there are to be incorporated into computer simulations. You want to run a flood model and get the results back in enough time to respond to the rising waters? Well, you need A LOT more computing power for that.

“Because we use so much technology, we’re at our limits now with what we can do,”  Leachman explained.

ARE•ON resolves that. It could compress modeling times from days to hours. And it could push more ATU students out into the real world.

For example, an ATU student in the emergency management program worked with Scranton, Pa., to help the city determine the best locations for new fire stations.

“We had an undergraduate student doing this as an internship,” Leachman explained. “And we are now doing this for the city of Russellville.”

Plug ARE•ON in and such work will require fewer hours and can be more exact.

The first “large practical thing” accomplished with ARE•ON is to launch a Web-based tool titled “Situation Arkansas,” Leachman said. The program will use numerous sources of “hazard data” and not just aggregate the information, but correlate the vast amount of information to a specific geographic or special business environment.

For example, Wal-Mart might use Situation Arkansas to immediately check on the status of its stores and other properties after a tornado rips through several Arkansas counties. (Speaking of Wal-Mart, Jason Jackson, the most recent director of Wal-Mart’s crisis control team, is a graduate of ATU’s emergency management program.)

Leachman said success of the university’s graduate program will be ensured with ARE•ON.

“That’s critical to the graduate program. Our goal with that is for our students to contribute, through research, back into the body of knowledge (about emergency management),” he said.

STUDENT CONNECTIONS
It’s a goal shared by Ray Wallace, provost and senior vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, and the UAFS team working with Abbiatti and Merrifield.

“As a result of this project, bandwidth to the campus will be increased fifty-fold while the speed of the campus backbone and the bandwidth accessed by faculty and students will be increased ten-fold,” noted information from a UAFS report on the project. “This increase in speed of access, coupled with the availability of education and research resources on Internet2; National LambdaRail (NLR); and from other colleges, universities, and research facilities across the nation and internationally, provide unparalleled opportunities for our faculty and students.”

The UAFS connection is scheduled for this summer.

“As a member of ARE•ON, UA Fort Smith can provide its computer science faculty and students access to the resource to offer research and instruction in the programming
of supercomputers,” according to the UAFS report. “Heretofore, this experience was available only at the largest research universities.”

TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER
That Arkansas university students don’t now have high-performance computing access in 2009 that is afforded college students in 40 other states almost mutes the excitement Abbiatti, Merrifield and Leachman exude.

But don’t ask Abbiatti to get philosophical. He’s too busy, and such musings deviate from his controlled message that any Arkansan who believes his or her child should have the same access to quality education “as a kid in Texas or Louisiana” should be excited about and supportive of ARE•ON.

The bottom line, possibly, of the four agendas and unprecedented university cooperation and an RV-driving Army colonel determined to ensure maximized connection of wires and people is “technology transfer.” Bigger pipes result in more research. More research results in more opportunities to commercialize knowledge. More of those opportunities result in jobs. Good jobs. 

“This is not just for four or five research geeks. … Technology transfer is going to happen. Would it have happened without ARE•ON? Yes. Would it have happened at the pace we think it will now happen? No,” Abbiatti said. “You’ll see jobs that come to Arkansas, that will be here for your kids, that wouldn’t have been here without (ARE•ON).”

Merrifield encouraged a thought experiment. About 22 years ago, the Internet was first piped into Arkansas. Look what that has meant. Now imagine, Merrifield challenged, what ARE•ON, a connection of “significantly greater magnitude” than the Internet, will mean in terms of socio-economic development.

HARNESSING THE POWER
In January, the Interagency Working Group on Digital Data of the National Science and Technology Council issued a detail report on “Harnessing the Power of Digital Data for Science and Society.”

“Technologies for high-speed, high-capacity networked connectivity have changed the nature of collaboration and have also expanded opportunities to participate in science through instant access to rich information resources around the world,” noted a paragraph in the introduction of the report.

The report includes a few sentences that possibly best explain why every Arkansan should fervently desire ARE•ON is a success: “The ability to achieve innovation in a competitive global information society hinges on the capability to swiftly and reliably find, understand, share, and apply complex information from widely distributed sources for discovery, progress, and productivity. Limits on information access translate into limits on all other aspects of competitiveness. Thus, digital information preservation and access capabilities are critical to the progress of individuals, nations, science, and society.”

That’s a lot of responsibility packed into one RV.