The fundamental purpose of the Integrated Research and Education in Advanced Networking (IREAN) program is to implement a unique research and educational environment to create Ph.D. students superbly prepared to face today's and tomorrow's challenges in industry, government, and academia. The program will engage at least 20 Ph.D. students, or IGERT Trainees, from electrical engineering, computer engineering, computer science, industrial and systems engineering, business, and economics in a variety of ways as they progress through the IREAN program at Virginia Tech.

Student and Program Outcomes

The traditional Ph.D. degree program, which focuses almost completely on developing technical expertise in a relatively narrow field of knowledge, does not prepare students for the multidisciplinary, team-oriented environment which is critical to success in academia, government, and industry. Today, and even more so in the future, researchers must be able to work in multidisciplinary teams that are often geographically distributed and culturally diverse, consider global, economic, and regulatory factors in their research, and communicate effectively in a variety of settings. The objective of our education and training program is to produce Ph.D. graduates who will become highly productive researchers prepared to meet the new challenges in advanced networking. Specifically, we will educate and train highly qualified to ensure the following five student outcomes.

1. Graduates from the program should have strong research abilities and in-depth knowledge in some aspect of advanced networking.
2. Graduates should understand and be able to integrate technical, business, regulatory, and global issues in the creation and analysis of technologies, systems, algorithms, protocols, and applications.
3. Graduates should be able to work effectively in distributed, culturally diverse, multidisciplinary teams.
4. Graduates should be able to communicate effectively with both subject area experts and the lay person and be effective as teachers as well as learners.
5. Graduates should be able to successfully cope with ethical dilemmas and conduct themselves in an ethical and professional manner.

Virginia Tech is already providing many of its graduate students with these critical attributes needed for the fully productive Ph.D. graduate. However, there are significant deficiencies in what we and others are doing with respect to preparing Ph.D. graduates for the research environment of the 21st Century. NSF IGERT funding allows us to formalize and establish an integrated education and research program in advanced networking, educate and train a significant number of students, and create a model for other research programs at Virginia Tech and at other universities.

In addition to the desired student outcomes listed above, we have two additional outcomes that are outcomes for the overall program.

• The program seeks to increase and enhance the involvement of women and underrepresented minorities in the networking and general information technology areas.
• The program seeks to provide educational benefits to undergraduate and masters students in the participating academic departments.

Strategies

We are applying the following six strategies to provide the integrated education and training needed to produce the five qualities in our Ph.D. students and to achieve the two additional desired program outcomes listed above.

1. We are implementing a research program that addresses key problems in advanced networking. The research program engages IGERT Trainees and other students in cutting-edge research related to the future Internet. We are realizing this program by integrating and extending existing research in networking, wireless communications, and business.
2. We integrating our research with "real world" problems through partnerships with industry, university-based infrastructure projects, and other universities. These partnerships provide internships for IGERT Trainees and collaborative research projects.
3. We are enhancing existing and creating new for-credit courses and non-credit technical and professional seminars for IGERT Trainees and other students. We are developing two new multidisciplinary courses, in addition to new networking courses. We are integrating a new writing course for graduate students and a communications workshop into our education and training program. We are running a new IREAN Seminar Series that will address ethics, and professional development, as well as technical, business, and policy issues.
4. We are striving to recruit a culturally diverse group of IGERT Trainees, with special emphasis on involving women and underrepresented minorities in the program.
5. We are involving IGERT Trainees in special teaching opportunities to improve their teaching and communication abilities and to benefit other participants. IGERT Trainees serve as teachers and mentors in a special summer research program for undergraduate students, with a special focus on underrepresented minorities.
6. We are providing IGERT Trainees with international experiences by sponsoring visiting international students and scholars. We are also offering international internship opportunities to IGERT Trainees.