Syracuse University has been awarded together with Virginia Tech a National Science Foundation (NSF) Partnership for Innovation two-year grant totaling $600,000 for the Wireless Grid Innovation Testbed (WiGiT).

The WiGiT will assist in refining transformative technologies to create markets, bridge the gap between wireless network middleware and grid application layers and accelerate commercialization and adoption of new products and services. WiGiT serves industry needs for intra-system, or crossover work bridging the world of grid or cloud computing and wireless Internet, by contributing to open standards and application programming interfaces for wireless grids.

This initiative includes faculty and students from Syracuse University, Virginia Tech, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts University and Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisbon, Portugal, with plans to include other world leading academic institutions.

Participants and partners at the inception of the project, in addition to the academic institutions, include private sector organizations and corporate partners such as Clear Channel Radio; Qualcomm, Syracuse Research Corporation; SenSyr LLC; Center for Advanced Engineering & Research, Inc.; MOD-ECO; and Wireless Grids Corporation (WGC). Governmental and intergovernmental organizations involved in the Testbed project include: Knowledge Society Agency Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education, Portugal; and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris, France.

The main goal of the project is to evaluate specifications for possible industry standards in order to scale and integrate the transformative innovation of wireless grids developed in a prior PFI, with specifications and protocols developed in Virginia Tech¡¯s NSF I/UCRC Wireless Internet Center for Advanced Technology, meshed with technologies and ideas from students, faculty, and companies worldwide.

Agenda from the meeting on September 16, 2009