The University of Missouri-Kansas City’s School of Computing and Engineering has become a member of GreenTouch, a global industry consortium dedicated to dramatically improving the energy efficiency of the information and communications technology networks by a factor of 1,000.
Researchers at UMKC’s SCE will collaborate with a number of high-profile institutions to research and invent technologies that will enable more energy-efficient networks. Without interventions like this one, internet and telecommunications energy usage is expected to grow to 10 percent of total global energy consumption by 2020. The goal is to demonstrate the new technology by 2015.
“The UMKC School of Computing and Engineering is a nationally-recognized research center with a longstanding commitment to environmental sustainability. We’re looking forward to working with our research partner in GreenTouch to make substantial reductions in energy consumption,” said Kevin Truman, dean of the school.
The not-for-profit consortium joins together independent think tanks, laboratories such as Bell Laboratories, and colleges including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia University and the Universities of Rochester and Maryland.
UMKC’s SCE is located in, and contributes to, one of the nation’s largest engineering communities. It is Kansas City’s only university with ABET-accredited engineering, computer science and information technology degree programs. Over the past four years, research funding has tripled to $10M, and the SCE’s enrollment has grown by 50 percent to 1,100 students. The program is expected to grow to 1,500 by 2014.
This collaboration is the latest of the SCE’s many distinguished partnerships and achievements. The SCE’s internationally-recognized faculty are involved in research partnerships with IBM and Intel, and SCE computer networking research has been funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Science Foundation.