Internet expansion

Prof urges Congressional approval

A Mississippi State professor last week urged Congress to expand the nation's Internet infrastructure.

Joe F. Thompson, professor of aerospace engineering and a Giles Distinguished Professor, was among six national experts testifying before the House Committee on Science on Sept. 10.

He was joined by President Clinton's assistant for science and technology and a member of the president's Advisory Committee for High Performance Computing, as well as professors from Stanford University and the University of Wisconsin.

The two-hour hearing addressed questions about the role of the federal government in developing the high-speed computer system, as well as potential partnerships between government, academia and industry.

Thompson argued that Clinton administration proposals for the Next Generation Internet will foster research and teaching collaborations currently slowed by tremendous usage. To implement NGI, the president is requesting $100 million annually for the next three years.

NGI is a multi-agency effort that includes the Defense, Commerce and Energy departments, as well as NASA and the National Science Foundation.

Thompson is the founding director of the NSF/MSU Engineering Research Center for Computational Field Simulation. He now leads a multi-university team providing support for the Defense Department's Major Shared Resource Center at the Corps of Engineers Waterways Experiment Station in Vicksburg.

With the shared resource center, NASA's Stennis Space Center, universities, and other state facilities, Mississippi ranks in the top 10 in national high-performance computing facilities.

In addition to successes of the Vicksburg center, Thompson discussed a new ERC/DoD partnership giving Mississippi State researchers more than 230,000 processor hours of supercomputer time to simulate engineering solutions for moving submarines.

His also testified that NGI's technological infrastructure will especially benefit rural areas where commercial network connections have been slower to develop.