The US Partners with Pakistan and the EC to facilitate Pakistan Collaboration in High-Energy Physics

1. Pakistan Network Connectivity via ACE-TP3<br />The US Partners with Pakistan and the EC to facilitate Pakistan Collaboration in High-Energy Physics<br />The National Science Foundation, the European Commission and the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan cooperatively provide high-performance international networking connectivity to Pakistan. While this network connectivity is used for a variety of research projects, in particular it enables the National Center for Physics in Pakistan to participate in the multinational Large Hadron Collider project based at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. <br />Working in partnership with several entities, Indiana University leads the ACE-TP3 project which is funded, in part, by the US National Science Foundation. The main ACE-TP3 partner in Pakistan is the Higher Education Commission which provides funding and runs the high-speed network in Pakistan. Through a partnership with the European Commission-funded TEIN3 network project, the US-Pakistan network is also connected to Europe and the global high-speed research and education network.<br />Physics, and almost all science, increasingly is multi-researcher, multi-laboratory and multi-national in nature. Without access through high-speed networks to laboratories, colleagues and data in other countries, physics researchers are unable to do their work. LHC is running since 2009 and providing valuable input and insight into the fundamental questions regarding the creation of the universe and understanding about the matter around us. LHC is producing huge amount of data, once operating at the nominal conditions, it will produce on one petabyte of data every year. Researchers in countries without such high-speed networks inevitability must leave the country to pursue their research, resulting in ‘brain drain.’ The high-speed network provided through the ACE-TP3 partnership allows Pakistani physicists to remain in Pakistan to conduct their research. Today at NCP using this network around 20 physicists conducting their research: this includes 4 PhD, 9 PhD students and 6 post-graduate students. Number of high quality results, conference talks and papers are produced using the data obtained via this network. <br />NCP is part of the World-wide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) where it is classified as a Tier-2 node, in the LHC computing model minimum required bandwidth for a Tier-2 node is 622 Mbps therefore the available internet connectivity is less than what is really required. <br />This multi-stakeholder partnership provides multiple paths for the large data transfers required for Pakistani physicists to participate in global research projects without impacting the data transfer needs of other science projects.<br />A diagram of this network follows: <need a better diagram here><br />”This joint initiative has not only allowed the researchers from Pakistan, while being in the country, to take part in a very important international research activity in the field high energy physics, but has also brought Pakistan on the canvas of international collaborative e-research while utilizing the intercontinental high speed research & education networks” Anwar Amjad, Director General (IT) – Higher Education Commission, Pakistan. <br />