Universidad de los Andes

Colombia's top private university, UniAndes is relatively flush with resources. It's perhaps for this reason that UniAndes has become a sort of well-functioning, albeit isolated, academic and research island that hugs the eastern hills of Bogota.

Besides the cleanliness, modern buildings, well-dressed students and intense security (bomb-sniffing dogs abound!), a striking difference that sets UniAndes apart from most other Colombian academic institutions is their band-width.

Instead of utilizing the academic RedClara/Renata backbone, which functions at maximum of 200mbps (hopeful plans are in the works for expanding this), they operate on a commercial network that operates at something like 600-900mbps.

The higher band-width, accompanied by modern equipment, well-trained professors, and high standards of instruction and research, makes UniAndes the most internationally collaborative university in Colombia (on the other hand, I was hard-pressed to find researchers at UniAndes that worked with researchers from other national universities). In physics, there are grid-computing networks set up between UniAndes and CERN and UniAndes and FermiLab, capable of data-sharing and processing, high-quality video-conferencing, and other forms of virtual collaboration.

There are also upper-level virtual classes being taken at UniAndes streamed live from the University of Texas, successfully creating a mixed local/virtual audience.

With more money comes more freedom, and the professors at UniAndes do have a higher capacity to travel and choose their research topics. These fundamental research output generators are still well below developed-country institutional standards, however, as the average professor at UniAndes is funded to travel once annually.

A thanks is in order to physics department head Dr. Carlos Avila, an experimental particle physicist and fellow Cornell graduate, who introduced me to the standards of research at UniAndes and provided many insights as to how to proceed with this project. Also to Dr's Chad Leidy, Manu Forero and Juan Manuel Pedraza, all of Biophysics. It was especially fun batting around ideas with Manu and Juan Manuel, young researchers and full of bright ideas for how to create a collaborative virtual research platform.

I also had the privilege to speak to two major players in Colombia's networking initiatives. Dr. Andres Holguin is responsible for setting up the GRID networks between UniAndes and international partners, several virtual learning initiatives, and is an active developer in Colombia's national academic network, RENATA, as well as the Bogota municipal network, called RUMBO. Dr. Harold Castro is a systems engineer who also works closely with RENATA and RedClara and has an active interest in virtual research and learning development.

UniAndes, overall, is a research institute of international caliber. It's a shame that they don't use their relatively privileged stature to collaborate with other Colombian institutes, but for many bureaucratic and political reasons that I've become familiar with, it's somewhat understandable. There's some hope that the band-width of the academic wires through which RENATA functions will expand, leading UniAndes to switch over to RENATA and better connect with their local colleagues. Until then, it's a pleasure to see a university in a developing country functioning at such a high level.