Students and faculty at DePaul University now will have access to more bandwidth and more resources and research tools as a result of a recent $150,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The grant, to be awarded over two years, will be used for high-performance computer network connections at the university. DePaul was one of only 20 universities nationwide to receive the grant.

The grants are awarded as part of the NSF’s High Performance Network Connections program, which aims to give scientists and engineers better access to research facilities. Since the program’s inception in 1995, more than 221 grants have been distributed to institutions across the country. The grant will enable DePaul to connect to a national grid of research networks that operate at speeds of up to 2.4 billion bits per second.

“Receiving this grant is yet another reason why DePaul continues to cement its status as a technology leader in the field of higher education,” said Greg Brewster, professor at DePaul’s School of Computer Science, Telecommunications and Information Systems (CTI). “It not only gives us the ability to compete for grants at the national level with large, research universities, but it also gives us access to many of the same resources and research tools at those universities. It will allow us to collaborate on some of the nation’s most cutting-edge technology research projects.”

Brewster, who also is director of DePaul’s Institute for Telecommunications Research and Education, served as principal investigator on the grant application.

The new connection will be utilized immediately by a number of projects at DePaul, including an interactive distance learning program, virtual meeting facilitation, sign language animation programs, 3-D graphics transport, transfer of large database projects, and the digitization of more than 65,000 images from the school’s image library.

In order to obtain the grant, DePaul submitted a lengthy proposal, detailing the different research projects that would take place if the connection grant was awarded. The proposal also had to provide an overview of the technology environment at DePaul.

“We had to show that DePaul had enough network savvy to maintain this type of high-speed connection and put it to use in innovative projects,” Brewster said. “We also had to show that DePaul offers an academic environment that encourages technological innovation.”

DePaul CTI is the largest computer science program in the country, offering six different undergraduate degrees. Nearly 2,400 students are enrolled in the graduate program, which offers nine different master’s degrees. DePaul CTI also features a Ph.D. program in computer science. For more information on DePaul CTI, visit www.cs.depaul.edu.