CAROL: PHD STUDENT

Carol is a PhD student doing a placement at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. The University is a member of the local NREN, RENU, and as such benefits from high-speed, reliable and secure connectivity to the global R&E community. RENU is also connected to the regional network, the UbuntuNet Alliance, peered with the pan-European network, GÉANT. Thanks to this, she is able to access a variety of services that enrich her daily work with collaboration opportunities with other students and researchers around the world.

HOW DOES CAROL BENEFIT FROM GÉANT?

When she is conducting research for her PhD thesis, she uses eduVPN to safely access her local university services using an encrypted connection. It can happen that she needs to access material on other institutions’ websites. She would have needed different accounts, several passwords and perhaps even pay subscriptions, but thanks to eduGAIN, she can access journals, libraries and any other online service from a participating identity federation with just her institutional credentials.

As part of her PhD project, she is collaborating with a fellow engineer at TU Delft. It is thanks to the high throughput connectivity between GÉANT and RENU that she is able to transfer and receive data to and from the Netherlands. She also has the opportunity to visit TU Delft to complete her project and uses her institutional credentials to connect to eduroam on campus but also in other locations across the whole of Uganda, the Netherlands and other countries she may visit.

She also has the opportunity to attend relevant training and workshops on network technologies organised and funded by the UbuntuNet Alliance and GÉANT through the AfricaConnect3 project.

Thanks to all these services and initiatives, Carol is empowered economically, her professional and academic life is enriched, and she is a valuable and active member of the worldwide academic community.