MOVIES

SAN FRANCISCO, Worldwide Education and Research Conference -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. continues to spark innovation in the higher education research community with five new centers of excellence. Columbia University, New York University (NYU), Open University of Catalunya, Tokyo University of Science, and University of Southern Denmark and University of Utah join an elite group of more than 30 Centers of Excellence across North America and Europe. Sun's COEs focus on topics of research from e-learning and bioinformatics, to genomics and fluid dynamics. "Sun Centers of Excellence are chosen for their leadership in technical computing and research," said Kim Jones, vice president, Global Education and Research for Sun Microsystems. "The five universities chosen today are visionaries in creating open computing environments, with the goal of fostering innovation in technologies that are important to real-world applications, such as neuroscience, e-learning and Java programming." Universities are already seeing the results of equipment donations, research collaboration and academic leadership from the Sun Center of Excellence program. Sun Provides Columbia University with High-End Computing, Visualization and Web Serving Capabilities to Create Worldwide Multi-User Neuroimaging Computing Center -- Sun selected Columbia University's Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) Laboratory as a Sun Center of Excellence in Neuroscience Research. The new center of excellence will utilize Sun technologies to improve the scope, scale and accessibility of functional brain imaging to medical/clinical and research institutions around the world. Headed by world-renowned neuroscience researcher Joy Hirsch, Ph.D. of Columbia University, the fMRI Laboratory's charter as a Sun Center of Excellence is to establish a collaborative and multi-investigator neuroimaging research environment focused primarily on education, medical applications, and the study of brain, behavior and therapy-induced cortical changes. New York University (NYU) and Sun Build Cutting-Edge Digital Library -- The NYU Digital Library Center of Excellence constructed a premier digital library infrastructure to test new methods for managing complex content, from an Internet-accessible archive through multiple interfaces and entry points. The digital library server will be capable of delivering exceptionally high quality text, image, audio and video resources to the NYU community while also supporting the library's institutional commitment to the preservation of its digital content. Working with Sun, the COE will provide a testbed of digital content for advanced research into digital library development, as well as uphold the university's commitment to enhancing access to knowledge to as wide an audience as possible. Open University of Catalunya (UOC) Brings Distance Education to Public and Government Institutions -- As a Sun COE, the UOC will extend higher distance education to public and government institutions worldwide in order to increase professional training and contribute to economic and social progress. Aiding governments and institutions in Europe, Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia, the UOC will facilitate and increase the dissemination of educational content over the Internet. The UOC is a 100 percent virtual university committed to life-long education at the service of the student. Tokyo University of Science Named Sun Center of in Biological Data Mining -- Professor Fumio Mizoguchi's Information Media Center has been named a Sun COE in Biological Data Mining, which will combine research in a number of Artificial Intelligence, computer science and computational biology technologies: Inductive Logic Programming, Java(TM), Visualization tools and Sun(TM) One Grid Engine, among others. These technologies will be used in several practical applications such as skin image data analysis and aging simulations, sensor data processing, drug design software, and genome data mining. Prof. Mizoguchi has founded Wisdom Tex to perform real-time skin diagnosis using internet, Java and image enabled cell phones. The University of Southern Denmark, in conjunction with Monash University, Australia, Simplifies Java Learning for First-Year College Students with BlueJ -- As a Sun COE in Object-Oriented Teaching and Training, University of Southern Denmark and Monash University will provide software tools and teaching material for innovative programming education. This work includes the development of new pedagogical approaches to the teaching and learning of programming, applicable to both new students and retraining of professional programmers in object orientation and Java. It is currently in use for introductory Java teaching at more than 200 universities around the world. The results of this work are made available to the teaching community worldwide through free software downloads, free teaching aids, seminars and workshops. For more information about Sun's Center of Excellence program, visit www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/edu/programs/coe/.