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“No one country spans all the climatic regimes or topographic characteristics manifested globally. We are therefore working with WUN collaborators to establish an international effort to study soil formation worldwide. The Worldwide Universities Network has already enabled us to initiate weathering studies in the Arctic and in the tropics in order to understand Earth’s weathering engine.”
“WUN has been an extremely effective catalyst for international collaboration. In an amazingly unbureaucratic fashion, WUN has provided modest, but critical resources to support project team meetings, student and faculty exchanges, and to reinforce partnerships so that more significant funding can be secured for long-term programs. Scripps Institution of Oceanography has definitely benefited from UCSD’s participation in WUN in both our education and research programs.”
“What’s exciting for me with the WUNgrid project is the way in which the traditional informatics approach is combined with the social sciences to provide knowledge gain in both fields. The WUNgrid approach has facilitated competence building in innovative project areas for us at Bergen.
“I don’t think I’ve ever participated in a more productive and interesting collaboration. We emerged with a detailed plan of action and it all happened extremely quickly. It was inspiring to see this group, with its diverse set of interests and methodological approaches, produce a coherent project plan with useful input from all sides.”
“My experience with WUN has been extremely positive. The INSPIRE program is a truly international program with a grand scope and the US subset of investigators has recently submitted a proposal to NSF to fund our participation. In addition, one of my graduate students, Giora Proskurowski, spent three months working with Dr. Damon Teagle at Southampton, funded by a WUN student fellowship. This interaction was of considerable importance to the completion of Giora’s thesis project.”
“Oceanography is an exceptionally international discipline by nature. It is wonderful to have an organization that facilitates international collaboration in this field. WUN’s contributions in this regard through the video-conference seminar series, graduate student exchanges, and support for proposal endeavors have all been extraordinarily helpful to me and to others at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.”
“Data grids have enabled the creation of shared collections that promote collaborations between universities. The WUN data grid takes this to next step by enabling federation of data grids between academic collaborations. This will promote truly international collaborations that can accelerate progress in science by engaging expertise from around the world. The WUN data grid is at the forefront of this activity.”
“The Seedbed Initiative for Transdomain Creativity is exploring cyberinfrastructure as a means to create self-sustained interdisciplinary communities. WUN is a key part of this, proving both the infrastructure and intellectual framework to extend this beyond the UIUC campus, to enable artists and humanists to create cyberenvironments supporting a worldwide distributed model of intellect and knowledge discovery.”
“In 2004 I had several WUN students spend time in the laboratory. They were a pleasure to have around. One is back and in a permanent job developing protein domain analysis tools for the 10,000 users of the RCSB Protein Data Bank, the world wide repository for the structures of biological macromolecules. I could not ask for more than that.”
“The WUN Global Exchange Programme has been immensely valuable in supporting Bioinformatics research here at York. We have been lucky enough to secure awards for some of our top Master’s students which have enabled them to visit labs in partner WUN institutions, such as UCSD and UIUC as part of our external placement programme. The scheme has also proved valuable in advancing the careers of graduate students.”
“The WUN is an excellent ready-made vehicle for progressing the complex multidisciplinarity inherent in Green Chemistry. We believe that the blend of expertise and experience in the partnership will put us in an unique position to progress the socially and economically vital grand challenge of developing a new and sustainable route to the chemical products of the future.”
“Our Green Chemistry research deals with techno-economic analyses and environmental assessments. This is a very specific area so we are very much looking forward to joint acquisition, projects, exchange of students and other researchers and collaborative activities in education as part of a much broader WUN Green Chemistry initiative.”
“The WUNACE program brings ranges of expertise within WUN Earth scientists together. In Utrecht we are delighted to be taking the lead in analyzing the geological and environmental history of the Arctic Ocean and surroundings. Researchers are brought together in ways that cannot be achieved through other programs, and which stimulates us to further explore the educational opportunities between WUN universities.”
“WUN support has proven crucial in building bridges between the US and European weathering communities. This has allowed us to organise two workshops, visit NSF and the EC, work with colleagues at PSU for an extended period of time and make firm contact between NSF and EC programme directors.”
“WUN has been enormously helpful to my research and to my students. The WUN’s Globalization and Educational Policy Group, has had vigorous discussions that cut across disciplinary boundaries and have contributed greatly to my understanding of the various ways in which educational policies are developed in extended regional and global spaces. WUN has helped my students at Illinois to develop and become part of a transnational research community with students who have similar research interests.”
“We intend to generate a global research alliance and virtual graduate school across the WUN partners. This initiative, called Constructing Knowledge Spaces, has grown from a GEP award I received in the autumn of 2003, and would have been impossible to push along without the WUN framework to develop within.”
“The value of WUN is that considerable expertise can be assembled from across the network to examine global issues, enabling researchers to generate new theoretical and practical knowledge in a real worldwide community of learners. This sort of interdisciplinary and cross-border initiative is increasingly important in a world which seems to be becoming more complex and changing more rapidly.”
“WUN has proved very helpful. Plans are already being put into practice and we are very keen to participate in a large-scale WUN project on Multilingualism in Medieval Societies. We are very pleased that Utrecht is a member of the WUN to enable faculty to participate in this global scholarly environment.”
“Intellectually, WUN’s recognition that complex research problems require multiple approaches has addressed the needs and ambitions of the research programme that I have been most closely involved, Multilingualism in the Middle Ages.”
“We were amongst the first to explore the deep biosphere of the oceanic crust and so recognise that the sampling and investigation requires a range of facilities — drilling platforms, analytical methods, technology and multidisciplinary skills in geology, geochemistry, and microbiology — that are too large for any single research group to support, or even national efforts to sustain. Research therefore depends on the international cooperation that WUN can provide.”
“Experience has shown that WUN support helps tremendously with promoting cross-disciplinary, trans-european and transatlantic initiatives. I hope that in future more proactive effort will to be put into international research led by WUN Biogeochemists. The support of WUN has allowed me to think big and across national boundaries.”
“The support of the WUN, to both our finances and our visibility, has allowed us to dream bigger than we could have imagined 18 months ago. From our project’s origins in historical research, we now envision concrete effects on the future of language reform. The seed support provided by the WUN is blossoming into major grant proposals with the Leverhulme Trust, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation, and others.”
“The Worldwide Universities Network is enabling those of us who study what has been done with languages across time to move out of our particular historical periods and out of our particular language specialisms and to think about language reform as a global and ongoing concern. We are tremendously excited about this opportunity to let past experience inform future practice and for those experienced in language reform to be able to guide those for whom language planning is a new challenge.”
“Through this initiative, we are looking to engage Madison faculty in new international collaborations within the WUN partnership. We hope to open up novel areas of research and deepen collaborative partnerships, particularly where this will lead to self-sustaining activities on the part of new research groups. Accelerating internationalization is now an established campus priority. Our belief is that the WUN Development Grant will not only generate innovative research projects, but will also nurture new relationships and networks.”
“As we are establishing a Centre for South East Asian Studies we have sought to forge links with other WUN partners. It is clear that WUN institutions are very well placed to help each other. There are many mutual benefits to be had by working together and the timing is perfect.”
“The WUN workshop constructed a platform in the field of public strategic management and public policy for the scholars coming from UK, USA and P. R. China, on which we not only exchanged the cross-cultural issues and views but also prepared for future collaborations.”
“A glance at the existing China studies expertise in WUN has convinced me of the potential for an outstanding network for research collaboration and advanced postgraduate research training on China.”
“One of my Ph.D. students returned from a 3 month WUN global exchange fellowship at the University of Southampton with key skills that accelerated his work on protein templated electrodeposition, WUN support was crucial in helping my group get started in templated electrodeposition.”
“We are enhancing our international profile through collaboration with excellent partner institutions. We are already working on turning the initial GIS agreement into a broader WUN Global Virtual GIS academy.”
“I have been involved in distributed learning and GIS for many years and WUN is one of the most exciting educational developments I have been involved with - it is extremely innovative but focussed on delivering real benefits to students to transform GIS education.”
“WUN has been crucial in facilitating international collaboration among educational institutions in this area and in particular in GIS. It has allowed us to craft a unique agreement with our partners to share students not educational material and this is clearly the future and we intend to rapidly build on this early success to build a global academy.”
“In the broad area of nano- and advanced materials, the WUN partner schools have top class expertise. A graduate student from my research group who visited Sheffield has helped us initiate a new project on true three dimensional numerical modeling of complex structure. This project would not have gotten its start without the expert knowledge he gained during the WUN supported visit.”
“Many of the world’s problems are global in nature and require the combined efforts, resources and brainpower of people from around the globe. Such problems simply cannot be managed by the typical research group laboring away in its chosen vineyard. WUN is the only organization that provides a functional framework to facilitate large-scale international research collaboration and reduce the administrative and logistical barriers that normally defeat such efforts."
"It has been remarkable to watch the rapid development of WUN collaborations at UIUC. In only a year, several groups have progressed from embryonic meetings at a coffee shop to completing joint proposals to various granting agencies. Meetings via Access Grid have made it easy to individuals to begin to trust one another and work effectively together. The research that is emerging will be important — and the doing of it is fun and rewarding.”
“The WUN partnership is an ideal venue to develop the global nursing research agenda. This discussion will incorporate key nurse scientists as well as graduate students from WUN partnering schools in Europe, Asia, and the U.S. The projected result is a research agenda focused on chronic illnesses and their management and builds on the scientific expertises of international colleagues.”
“WUN is providing a unique opportunity to bring together leading researchers from top Nursing Schools and Faculties across the partnership. Such collaborations will further strengthen the scientific underpinnings of nursing interventions and tackle health issues in key areas of global importance and relevance. This in turn will have a positive influence on the delivery and quality of care received by patients and clients across the world.”
“Environmental acoustics research needs interdisciplinary and international efforts in science, engineering and social sciences. WUN is the first cross-continent network suitable to take this sort of collaboration forward. Within WUN there are several world leading acoustics centres. While the main idea of the WUN environmental acoustics network is developing collaborative research, the instruments provided by WUN such as WUNgrid and the GEP, are very important for developing the network.”
“I spent two months working at UCSD on a cross-layer optimization project. This was a good opportunity to interact with the partners involved in the project in a fruitful way and to collaborate with some of the leading experts in the field.”
“The WUN global exchange program enabled me to carry out exciting research at UCSD with one of the world leaders in molecular simulation and bioinformatics. The collaborative research initiated by the exchange has lead to communication between the two Departments that has ultimately benefited the research of both York and UCSD.”
“My student’s work in America has allowed York to become involved in ‘real’ biological research - an outcome which would simply not have been possible without WUN support’.
“The York Centre for Medieval Studies (CMS) must rank as one of the most congenial work environments in academia! I can’t even begin to say how much the people there helped me focus my work, and some of the manuscripts I examined while in England have caused real breakthroughs in my project. Some of my York friends are now hoping to come to Illinois through the WUN, so the dialogues will continue between our Medieval Studies Program and the CMS.”
“The opportunity to live and learn in Sheffield gave me much more than just a change of address. I was immediately involved and integrated as part of the Concrete and Masonry Research Group, under the direction of Dr. Matthew Gilbert. The research in masonry arch bridges I completed at Sheffield University during my WUN exchange is now the basis for my Master’s thesis at Penn State University. Being able to draw from the collective expertise at both universities has proven to be invaluable in helping to complete my education.”
“WUN funding was very useful in making it possible for me to carry out a placement at the San Diego Supercomputer Centre (SDSC). This placement was with a group responsible for maintaining the Protein Databank, the key database in structural bioinformatics. This experience has proven useful in my continuing research career in structural bioinformatics. I am now researching at the European Bioinformatics Institute at Hinxton Cambridge, under the supervision of Prof. Janet Thornton, Director.”
“Attending the October 2004 WUN Symposium in Orlando, Florida has proven to be one of the best professional development activities of my academic career. As a result I am now collaborating on a large-scale eLearning research project with Professor Andrew Whitworth at Leeds. We hope the project, which includes research sites in both the US and UK, will serve as a springboard from which other eLearning collaborations can be launched.
“As an early career scholar, I value WUN for the collaborative environment that it provides. I view this project as merely scratching the surface of WUN possibilities. This initial collaboration has already led to my inclusion in a WUN-sponsored eLearning research workshop being organized by my UIUC colleague, Professor Caroline Haythornthwaite. The collaborative opportunities in WUN seem to increase each day.”
“This pooling of resources to create a richer curriculum, enabled by WUN, is clearly where extended education is headed.”
“WUN provides an ideal forum for collaboration in both eLearning research and innovative sharing of expertise across international borders. Participating WUN universities have the opportunity to identify similar emerging research interests, and also areas where sharing of resources, programs, and faculty expertise strengthens the overall capacity of each university. What is most promising about WUN in the area of eLearning is having a solid framework for facilitation, encouragement, seed-funding, and development of ideas into real projects.”
“The WUN association has been enormously useful to me for putting in motion working relationships with researchers from the US and UK. In the fall I will be hosting a WUN-sponsored researcher to explore eLearning and social networks, and with WUN support, I am organizing a workshop on eLearning for fall 2005 that will bring together researchers from several WUN universities. I very much appreciate the opportunities the association with WUN has, and is opening up for me and I look forward to participating in WUN initiatives in the future.”
“WUN continues to provide very stimulating networking opportunities with US and UK colleagues, opportunities that I believe benefit all of the researchers involved as well as their home universities. In particular, my participation in the eLearning Research Symposium in Orlando last fall and in the ESRC research seminar in Southampton this April, was both personally and professionally rewarding. WUN, through its support of international eLearning research collaboration, is setting the stage for major advances in eLearning research and practice.”
“The existence of WUN has provided the administrative framework and the seed funding for the scholarly interaction that has made our joint activities possible. WUN has been absolutely vital to the development of these initiatives and is in the process of opening wider collaboration among faculties who would otherwise have little or no contact with each other.”
“The modern comparative study of language communities, their interaction and their history in Europe is exciting for medievalists. As regards the Centre of Medieval Studies in Bergen (CMS), the WUN network will enable us to participate fully in fresh research carried out in the US and UK, and to forge more links on senior as well as junior levels. The project will give us a good opportunity to become better known, to spread our own expertise and most importantly, to help shape a scholarly program in a framework of mutual commitment.”
“Many of our most important environmental challenges are global in nature, and exceed the capacity of single institutions to address. We are developing a collaborative initiative, based in the WUN, which will facilitate interactions among an interdisciplinary group of distinguished environmental scientists. Central to this effort will be scientific exchanges and cross-training among colleagues at the UW-Madison, Southampton and Bergen.”
“We are entering a new phase of synthesizing paleoclimatic data from the Arctic, WUN provides fast and efficient means for discussing research goals, analyses, and results through real-time conversations among researchers on different continents. This is a vast improvement over past projects, which depended mainly on communication through costly and infrequent workshops.”
“The WUN seminars are a way to the future, with memorable talks ranging (in our case) across the Earth sciences. WUN’s program of student exchanges has benefited University of Washington greatly, and in a world of accelerating environmental change the approach to the building of a global community is not just important, it’s vital.”
“This program opens up new vistas for our undergrads fascinated with the oceans but otherwise limited in their ability to participate in oceanographic research and advanced coursework. In turn, Southampton students are now able to study at one of the top geoscience departments in the US and engage in geological research with our faculty and students. We are currently discussing another new departure - a Modeling, Observing and Recognizing Earth Systems summer school - with 2 weeks at PSU and 2 weeks at Southampton.”
“There are very few organizations that have as a goal catalyzing research and teaching among marine science institutions of different nations. WUN is a bold experiment to do this, and I believe it has succeeded in creating growing momentum toward achieving the type of partnerships that are necessary to pursue large, interdisciplinary problems in oceanography.”
“Although the individual groups involved in research on electrodeposition are small, together they possess an exceptional breadth of expertise and, united by WUN, are uniquely qualified to achieve goals that would be beyond any one group acting alone.”
“WUN represents the very best research universities and social science faculties in the world. The first Horizons in Human Geography Seminar Series was a tremendous success, featuring faculties from eight universities in America and Europe interacting in one tele-course. The presentations and discussions were dynamically engaging and broke important new ground in theory and method. Graduate students in these departments had an ongoing dialogue with some of the best theorists and practitioners in the world today.”
“The WUN on-line seminars are an exciting new way to engage students and faculty in many locations, simultaneously. My participation in the seminars has stimulated the exchange of students and postdocs with sister institutions, and the development of international efforts in computational biology. WUN is very worthwhile, and I have enjoyed increasing interactions with colleagues at York, Southampton and Manchester.”
“WUN represents a wonderful revitalization of links within and between university communities and encourages new interactions that strengthen international, interdisciplinary research and teaching. The development of WUNACE has brought together a diverse group of specialists to address global change issues as they relate to the Arctic. Without such a facilitating umbrella, research efforts all too often become overly individualistic and opportunities for truly significant break-throughs are limited.”
“WUN is an extremely flexible and welcoming vehicle for graduate students and faculty to initiate collaborations. The transcontinental opportunities to coordinate seminars, especially on subjects for which a single department may lack a critical mass of faculty, enlarges and enriches the experience of graduate education and faculty collaboration.”
“The WUN Green Chemistry initiative is providing new and exciting opportunities for partnering in research and education. We recently submitted a joint research proposal with the team from York, and are now working on our first collaborative research paper. The new virtual seminar series will strengthen our ties, allowing more researchers access to new knowledge and innovative analysis methods while facilitating further development.”
“It has been a pleasure to be part of WUN and I look forward to directing the ‘Paleo-hosing’ project of the WUNACE initiative wherein we shall simulate the climate of the Younger Dryas and, by comparing these simulations with paleoclimatic data, should be able to test and improve our atmosphere-ocean climate models and, thereby, enable projection of possible future climate change with diminished uncertainty.”