The Internet Technologies Research Group at the University of Ulster, Coleraine in Northern Ireland has established an exciting collaborative relationship with Cisco Systems, Inc., in San Jose, California, that will place several internship positions at their internationally renowned Research Laboratories in the USA.

Cisco Systems, Inc., the worldwide leader in networking, develops hardware, software, and service offerings to create networks that give individuals, companies, and countries easy access to information anywhere, at any time. In addition, Cisco has pioneered the use of the Internet and networking systems in its own business practice and offers consulting services based on its own experience to help other organisations worldwide.

This collaboration will exist between the Network Management Research Team at the main Cisco Systems Headquarters in San José, and Professor Gerard Parr at the University Ulster. The Intern projects will be fed from the pool of final year undergraduate and postgraduate students who have expertise relevant to the Masters degree in Telecommunications and Internet Technologies that runs at the University’s Coleraine campus.

Professor Parr said: "Since the majority of the Internet is run and managed over Cisco equipment, this is a truly amazing opportunity for our students to interact with and learn from the world leader in current and next generation networking. The research and innovation within Cisco Systems is used to power the development of the Internet globally. Our students will be engaged with internationally leading research projects relating to MIB Engineering, Autonomic GRID Networking and Next Generation Network Management over the fixed-wireless interface.

Senior Technical Leaders within Cisco Systems and Professor Parr will supervise the UU interns jointly.

The news of the collaboration comes as part of a wider initiative which will see a total of sixteen students from the island of Ireland selected to be inters at Cisco Systems in San José in the summer of 2006. They will be offered assistance with J-1 visas, flight and set-up costs and will then be paid a competitive salary by Cisco Systems for the period of their internship.

Karl McDermott from Cisco Systems, Ireland said

"We want to showcase the Telecommunications Engineering and Software Development skillsbase that exists within the Higher Education System in Ireland to Cisco Corporate in the USA. By teaming up with world-recognised research groups we can gain access to a talent pool of students on courses such as the MSc in Telecommunications and Internet Technologies at the University of Ulster and those at other leading Irish universities.

Such courses develop expertise in Network Management and Wireless Communications that can provide a pathway to PhD programmes of research that are relevant to strategic areas of interest for Cisco Systems."

Further information:

More information about Cisco Systems, Inc. from: http://www.cisco.com

from http://www.infc.ulst.ac.uk/informatics/courses/msc/tds

For further information, please contact:

David Young
Telephone: 028 90366074
Email: David Young