Stanford University, SLAC, NIIT and the Digital Divide

1
Stanford University, SLAC, NIIT and the Digital
Divide

• Prepared by Les Cottrell, SLAC
• for the NIIT , March 18, 2005

2
Stanford University

• Location

3
Some facts

• Founded in 1890s by Governor Leland Stanford
  wife Jane
• in memory of son Leland Stanford Jr.
• Apocryphal story of foundation
• Movies invented at Stanford
• 1600 freshman entrants/year (12 acceptance), 71
  studentfaculty, students from 53 countries
• 169K living Stanford alumni

4
Some alumni

• Sports Tiger Woods, John McEnroe
• Sally Ride Astronaut
• Vint Cerf father of Internet
• Industry
• Hewlett Packard, Steve Ballmer CEO Microsoft,
  Scott McNealy Sun
• Ex-presidents Ehud Barak Israel, Alejandro
  Toledo Peru
• US Politics Condoleeza Rice, George Schultz,
  President Hoover

5
Some Startups

• Founded Silicon Valley (turned orchards into
  companies)
• Start by providing land and encouragement
  (investment) for companies started by Stanford
  alumni, such as HP Varian
• More recently Sun (Stanford University Network),
  Cisco, Yahoo, Google

6
Excellence

• 17 Nobel prizewinners
• Stanford Hospital
• Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) my
  home
• National Lab operated by Stanford University
  funded by US Department of Energy
• Roughly 1400 staff, contractors outside users
  gt 3000, 2000 on site at a given time
• Fundamental research in
• Experimental particle physics
• Theoretical physics
• Accelerator research
• Synchrotron Light research
• Has faculty to pursue above research and awards
  degrees, 3 Nobel prizewinners

7
Work with NIIT

• Co-supervision of students, build research
  capacity, publish etc., for example
• Quantify the Digital Divide
• Develop a measurement infrastructure to provide
  information on the extent of the Digital Divide
• Within Pakistan, between Pak other regions
• Improve understanding, provide planning
  information, expectations, identify needs
• Provide and deploy tools in Pakistan

8
World View
C. Asia, Russia, S.E. Europe, L. America, M.
East, China 4-5 yrs behind India, Africa 7 yrs
behind
S.E. Europe, Russia catching up Latin Am., Mid
East, China keeping up India, Africa falling
behind
Internet performance from US to Europe India
Sub-continent
Factor 10 improvement in 6 years
Important for policy makers
Quality in KBytes/s
India
Europe
Keeping up
7 years behind
Many institutes in developing world have less
performance than a household in N. America or
Europe
9
Compare with TAI

• UN Technology Achievement Index (TAI)

Note how bad Africa is