This is a time of major change for the nation’s universities. The rapid growth of the information-based economy, the increasing need for lifelong learning, and the pervasive importance of computing and communications technology all have profound consequences for the intellectual fabric of the university. At Cornell, we are actively responding to the opportunities and challenges posed by these changes. Our efforts to build a university for the next millenium span all areas, from student life, to educational activities, to research, to administration. At Cornell, innovative teaching and research are playing an important role in transforming our university. For example, we were one of the first universities to provide high-speed network connections in every dorm room. We also developed the innovative visual communications software CUSeeMe, used around the world.

This proposal focuses on the educational and research missions of the university. It involves faculty from all over Cornell – in four colleges and in the Johnson Graduate School of Management. Our goal is to exploit new computing and communications technologies to develop a new learning environment at Cornell. This environment will make it easier for people to work together as effective teams, expose students to more problems with "real world complexity," and support multiple styles of learning. The environment will use high-speed communications networks and substantial desktop and server computing power to deliver information in ways that are more visual, more customizable and more interactive.

We believe that Intel Architecture (IA) machines provide an ideal platform for this project. Our view is that powerful desktop systems are critical to provide customizable, interactive visual applications. We do not believe that a server-centric "network computer" model will scale to thousands of clients using interactive video and simulations. The proposed project will enable us to test the scalability both of the applications developed for specific courses and research projects and of the core infrastructure that we plan to put in place. This infrastructure will consist of off-the-shelf hardware and software together with new software systems that we will develop.

The Computer Science Department will take a leading role in the proposed project, developing core software technologies that will support the fast, safe, reliable, low-latency computing and communications necessary for interactive visual computing applications. Our Computer Science Department is one of the top five in the nation, and has been the leading department in transitioning its research and teaching onto Intel Architecture machines and the Windows NT operating system. Computer Science will work closely with the campus computing and communications service provider, Cornell Information Technologies (CIT), in order to roll out technologies to the campus, and to share their expertise using IA machines and Windows NT.

We expect that this project will be highly visible and have significant impact throughout the nation. If we are successful in delivering our vision of a new, distributed, interactive learning environment, then Cornell will serve as a model for other universities. Moreover, as the project moves towards this ambitious overall goal, it will have a continuing impact. It will result in the development and testing of new operating systems, networking, visual communications, computer graphics, multimedia and numerical techniques. This leading-edge computer science research will take place on IA machines, rather than on traditional Unix workstations. The project will also result in the transition of several world renowned research groups onto IA machines, including the Laboratory of Atomic and Solid-State Physics (LASSP) and the Materials Science Center (MSC). These projects will port their widely used numerical codes from Unix workstations to IA machines. Finally, the project will involve the development of more speculative uses of advanced computing and communications, including an interactive, distributed digital arts studio and digital library applications.