Research Engagement activities at TNC25 started on 9 June 2025 with a visit to the University of Sussex, a leading research-intensive university in Brighton. This visit was facilitated by Jisc, the UK’s national research and education network, and our host – Prof. Maziar Nekovee, Head of the Centre for Advanced Communications, Mobile Technology and IoT (ACMI).
The welcome session started with a recorded message from Prof. Luc Moreau, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine. After that, Prof. Maziar Nekovee gave participants an overview of the main research directions of the ACMI group. This included satellite communications and signal processing, new wireless and optical communications, beyond-5G and 6G mobile communications, as well communications and sensor technologies for the automotive, automation and health/medical sectors and the IoT, as well as recent collaborations with academia and industry partners.
The Foundations of Software Systems Group was represented by Prof. George Parisis who introduced congestion control for low Earth orbit satellite networks (including a project implemented with the support of the GÉANT Innovation Programme and Jisc as a partner), as well as Prof. Luc Berthouze who spoke about functional connectivity in microservices in the context of Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps).
Labs Tour at the University of Sussex
The Labs Tour included visits to the labs from the departments of engineering, informatics and physics.
At the 6G Lab, a sixth generation mobile communications R&I Lab, PhD students showcased their research work to enhance spectral efficiency and reliability; and utilising blockchain technology to improve the security and privacy of vehicular networks.
Also, advances in different fields were presented, such as facial emotion detection (to support elderly care); efficiency-enhanced metasurface for wireless power transfer systems designed for electric vehicles; and deep learning based methods for breast cancer diagnosis.
At the V2X Lab, Prof. Zhengguo Sheng and his PhD students introduced ongoing research projects related to secure and efficient vehicular communications; wireless sensor networks; in-vehicle communications; and connected vehicle systems.
Dr Yanan Li, from the Centre for Robotics and Sensing Technologies, showed examples of research applications on several topics, including: adaptive robots aimed at work in extreme environments; robotics systems inspired by nature; high precision robotics and sensing (for surgery and medicine); mobile robots to address challenges in agriculture and transportation; and physical human-robot interaction.
Research from the Creative Technology Group was presented by Prof. Kate Howland, lead of the Human-Centred Technology Lab, with a focus on the design of systems for learning, education technology research, and participatory design with children and young people. Also, Prof. Gianluca Memoli spoke passionately about exploring different new technologies for tangible results – and showcased experiments with metamaterials and acoustic levitation, performing noise cancellation (without headphones), as well as sound manipulation.
Finally, it was the turn of ‘incredible wonders’ at the Sussex Centre for Quantum Technologies, with a visit to the Ion Trap Cavity-QED Lab, where research is carried out on dark matter particles detection, portable optical atomic clocks, Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics, and molecular physics. The cavity-QED experiments exploit the interaction between single ions and photons to create an interface between the information stored in the atomic ion and light, contributing for a future version of the internet, the quantum internet, in which quantum information is distributed between remote quantum computers.
During this visit, there were a lot of questions from the participants and the researchers responded enthusiastically, exploring opportunities for future collaboration and deeper dialogue, with a focus on learning from one another and identifying scientific needs and expectations for support from NRENs.
SIG-RED meeting at TNC25
On 13 June 2025, the Special Interest Group on Research Engagement Development (SIG-RED) meeting brought together 20 representatives of NRENs and R&E organisations from 4 continents to share their experiences and learn about successful approaches to research engagement.
Chris Atherton, Senior Research Engagement Manager at GÉANT and Chair of SIG-RED, offered an overview of why SIG-RED exists, the main focus areas, its contribution to the global R&E community, recent activities, key challenges, and collaborations with other SIGs and TFs.
Christopher Walker of Jisc outlined research engagement in the UK, highlighting the importance of anticipating the needs of the R&E institutions to support big science (WLCG/GridPP, SKA, Vera Rubin). He spoke about ‘big compute’ – regional HPC centers supporting different universities and different areas of science. The Janet network is a reliable network that enables researchers to experiment and test – as with a real fiber in real ground. Another use case of Jisc services to support the broader community are network music performances, having a huge potential in the broad and international scope.
Jason Zurawski of Energy Sciences Network (ESnet), USA, presented an overview of the Requirements Review Program – one of the flagship programs of ESnet. With ESnet’s core mission of ensuring large-scale data movement and providing network services to enable science, this Program is aimed at gathering and understanding current and future networking needs (with possible revisions over time). There are 6 major areas to support: advanced scientific computer research, basic energy sciences, biological and environmental research, fusion energy sciences, high energy physics, and nuclear physics. He emphasized the importance of in-person discussions with scientists to understand their projections of networking needs.
Débora Reis of RNP, the Brazilian NREN, presented Brazil’s e-Science Network – a high-capacity infrastructure whose building and evolution started in 2014 with big data challenges. She dived into design principles (Science DMZ network architecture to support data-intensive science) and procedures to connect national laboratories through public calls for proposals. Currently, the network supports climate, cosmology, high energy physics, astronomy, nanotechnology, genomics, agriculture, health, and geoscience research.
Marco Verdicchio of SURF, the Dutch NREN, spoke about HPC at SURF and corresponding services for research and education. With their quite heterogeneous research services ecosystem (HPC, data processing, Cloud computing, Sync&Share, etc.), SURF works together with SURF members on transforming/digitising more R&E with a lot of knowledge exchange and training. Within the Dutch HPC ecosystem, the focus is on T2/T3 integrating regional and university HPC systems, providing access, local support, and federated infrastructure. In the context of services development, he highlighted the possibility of collaboration with researchers on the co-design of service components that can used in users’ applications.
The presentations were followed by a Q&A session, where all speakers shared challenges and their opinions on how to progress research engagement.
Engaging and understanding R&E communities is critical for the sustainability and relevance of NRENs. SIG-RED is driven by a fundamental desire to understand new things, ask questions and expand knowledge. So, ‘Be curious!’ can easily become the motto of every SIG-RED meeting.
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