Zayed University Students to use Ankabut Network for Open Source Project
April 22, 2013
Ankabut hosted a group of students on April 10th from Zayed University under the supervision of Dr. Manar Abu Talib to discuss how Ankabut can facilitate and provide resources to run open source software that can benefit social researchers in the UAE.
The five undergraduate student team members, Adhraa Al Mansoori, Sara Al Hammadi, Sharmina Haque Naeema, Amal Al Amoudi, and Kholoud Al Amoudi, are installing the Dataverse Network, a web-based open source application. Dataverse can be installed in institutions and used by researchers to publish, share, reference, extract and analyze research data. It contains an online digital repository for research data to make the information available to others and it allows for replication of the data. Researchers and data authors, publishers, distributors and affiliated institutions receive publication credit through this application. The application has been used by Harvard University and has shown promising results in the social research area. The students believe it will make a vital contribution to the improvement of technologies designed to support research and knowledge development in the UAE.
Zayed University team member Adhra Al Mansoori stated: “Having the first meeting with Ankabut was an encouraging experience; they have shown great support to our project and looking forward to continue our journey with them.”
“We were overwhelmed with Ankabut’s generosity, support, and help and we are so thankful for the useful information provided about Ankabut, the informative discussion, the inspiring talk and the nice souvenirs”’ said Dr. Manar Abu Talib a faculty member of Zayed University who serves as the team supervisor. “We hope that we work together to reach to the next level of excellence that would serve this country. It is really a great honor working with an esteemed organization like Ankabut.”
”Ankabut is pleased to host students of one of its founding members and to help them in their projects. Ankabut is committed and to adapt its portfolio of services to answer their needs” said Dr. Ahmed Dabbagh, Manager of Technology and Services. “Ankabut was impressed with the level of professionalism of the hosted students of ZU which gives an excellent indication to the high level of education they are receiving at their institution.”
Ankabut will play a vital role in making this project successful and will run the Dataverse Network application on their server to make it accessible for social researchers in the UAE. Ankabut will provide the technical help and help the students with the project requirements and computer and network resources.
About Ankabut
Ankabut is the United Arab Emirates’ Advanced National Research and Education Network (NREN) offering academic institutions connectivity to other education networks around the world. In addition to connecting universities, Ankabut connect schools and public institutions together across the UAE with an effective cost model. Ankabut cooperates on a national, GCC, regional and international arena representing the UAE in conferences, exhibitions and forums. Ankabut offer QoS based networks with IPv4/IPv6, multicast and advanced services on a “Closed Group Network” with “Public Interest Purposes”.
The Ankabut Project is jointly funded by the TRA through the ICT Fund, Khalifa University and member support.
Ankabut with connections to over 60 campuses interconnects universities with a 10G backbone and 1G access links. Ankabut also provides international connectivity of 155 Mbit/s to its members via Internet2. It enables a closed community network that allows the transfer of real-time services such as converged IM, voice and video communication, time-critical services such as grid computing interconnect (cloud computing). In addition Ankabut offers services such as e-learning, email, library interconnect, off-site disaster recovery, global federated single-sign-on to name a few.
Ankabut supports initiatives in the e-learning environment, library content and distribution systems and research collaboration. Ankabut believes that identifying these initiatives and offering network, processing and storage support is the best way to develop a collective collaborative approach to research and education.
