Under the Patronage of His Highness Sayyid Taimur Bin As’ad Al Said, the Arab States Research and Education Network – ASREN, announced its fourth annual event “4th International Platform on Integrating Arab e-Infrastructure in a Global Environment – e-AGE 2014” taking place on 10-11 December 2014 in Muscat, Oman. The platform was hosted by The Research Council (TRC) of Oman.

What is e-AGE all about?

Integrating Arab e-infrastructure in a Global Environment, e-AGE, is an annual international event organized by the Arab States Research and Education Network, ASREN. e-AGE is in line with ASREN’s major objectives related to creating awareness, promoting R&E collaboration and joint activities and establishing human networks in order to facilitate collaboration and cooperation among researchers and academicians in the Arab region and the rest of the world.

In e-AGE 2014, the main theme was “Intercontinental Connectivity of the Pan Arab Network”. ASREN started concrete steps towards interconnecting researchers and academics across the Arab States by launching its first PoP in London Telicity and working with its partners on new PoPs in UAE, Egypt and the Maghreb region. ASREN is also supporting the development of NRENs in some Arab countries. ASREN aims to give special attention and more focus on users and how the e-Infrastructure can support their needs in terms of services and applications. More sessions are dedicated to the users to present their research and education activities and then to identify how these users can be better served by NRENs.

Topics of interest

• Research collaboration in energy, environment, health, climate, water, agriculture, biology, economy, medicine and other pressing global issues and problems.
• Perspectives on NRENs, including challenges, operation, sustainability, funding, governance, business models, security and services.
• Access to research and education resources, repositories, libraries and contents, clouds, grids and HPCs.
• Connectivity options including technologies, services, cables, circuits and equipment.
• Internet developments and impact on R&E networks.
• e-Services like e-Science, e-Government, e-Libraries, e-Learning, e-*…
• Virtual Research Environments, Science Gateways, Federation of Identities, eduroam, eduGAIN …

Events and Activities

ASREN is becoming more visible and more active in the region and beyond. It has developed a new shareholder scheme with more Arab NRENs joining as well as more supporting organizations. Following on the success of e-AGE in 2011, 2012 and 2013, e-AGE 2014 included events, workshops, meetings centered on the following themes:

• The 7th Event on Euro-Mediterranean e-Infrastructure
• The 4th annual meeting of ASREN
• AROQA 6th Annual Conference
• EUMEDCONENCT3 Meeting
• Technical Workshops on R&E networking (to be announced)

Moreover special sessions were dedicated to specific domains, mainly focusing on experiences in connectivity and e-Infrastructure, applications and services in variety of scientific domains and case studies with impact indicators and measures. It is also important to show how research infrastructure created benefits to communities and collaboration. It is still critical to show how research connectivity can promote collaboration and innovation. Different discussions were stimulated during e-AGE to drive outcomes and concrete results on practical steps towards developing a regional e-Infrastructure.

Venue

Grand Hyatt Hotel, Muscat, Oman

Important dates

• 1st October: Submission Deadline (Papers, Posters and Presentations)
• 15th October: Acceptance Notification
• 27th November: Final Pdf posters, Word papers and Presentations slides
• 4th December: Registration Deadline
• 10th-11th December: e-AGE 2014

Registration fees

• Speakers: Free
• Papers Authors: 50 Euro
• ASREN Members: 150 Euro
• ASREN non-members: 250 Euro

Further information

Conference official website:

• http://asrenorg.net/eage2014/

Papers and Poster submission:

• Salem Al-Agtash, alagtash@asrenorg.net, Mobile: +962 77-720-1998
• Federico Ruggieri, federico.ruggieri@roma3.infn.it, Mobile: +390 65-733-7232

Proposals, Presentations and Program:

• Yousef Torman, torman@asrenorg.net, Mobile: +962 77-990-7900

Registration, Payment, Reservations and Others:

• Ola Samara, osamara@ASRENOrg.net, Mobile: +962 78-868-6802