Center for Telecommunications Education and Research

Director: Gary Grimes, PhD

Established: 1985

Mission and Demographics

The mission of the Center for Telecommunications Education and Research is to provide state-of-the-art, cost-efficient services and technology that facilitate information transfer and communication and to provide technical support, research expertise, engineering knowledge, and continuing education programs to organizations in the telecommunications industry. The Center currently has 17 appointed faculty representing 7 departments and 5 schools at UAB.

Center Activity

The Center for Telecommunications conducts research and education programs in optical interconnection, virtual reality applications in medicine, wireless and optical networking, telemedicine, telerehabilitation, telework, optical fibers and sensors, applications of networking in healthcare, use of consumer devices in medicine, nontraditional human-computer interfaces, and lasers. It maintains laboratories in the UAB Business Engineering Center for research in all of these topics except for lasers. An additional laboratory is located in Campbell Hall for laser and optical networking research.

The Center for Telecommunications is industry oriented. Its present and recent sponsors for research and education programs include Picolight Inc., Agilent, Lucent Technologies, Delphi Automotive, General Motors, Intel, BellSouth Communications, the BellSouth Foundation, Nanoptics, Greenleaf Medical Corp., Virtual Rehabilitation Works, Inc., AT&T, the Boeing Co., IBM, Lockheed-Martin, Hewlett-Packard Labs, Honeywell Technology Center, and Digital Optronics Corp. Recent government sponsors include the University Transportation Center of Alabama (UTCA), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). New research initiatives have been started in the following areas this year: virtual reality applications in pediatric pedestrian safety, use of portable devices for Alzheimer’s Disease rehabilitation, a new wireless system for broadband metro access, DV and HDV over IP, and applications of knowledge-based engineering to rapidly expand hospital capacity in a mass casualty incident.

Training

The Center for Telecommunications Education and Research offers educational programs custom tailored for specific industries and corporations. Additional information may be obtained by contacting the Center directly or by visiting its website at http://cter.eng.uab.edu. A major new Center activity to increase the prosperity of Alabama as well as its quality of life is the launching of the Alabama Telework Initiative (ATI) with the help of the UTCA. More information is available at http://telework.eng.uab.edu. Information on the Center’s research collaborations with the UAB Program in Health Informatics is available at http://main.uab.edu/show.asp?durki=33489.

For additional information:

Director: Gary Grimes, PhD

Email: ggrimes@uab.edu

Phone: 205-934-3147

Administrator: Charlotte Oliver

Email: coliver@uab.edu

Phone: 205-934-3147

Approved by: Gary Grimes, PhD, Director

Date: May 3, 2006 (Update requested)

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