New Mexico connects its Universities with VC

SANTA FE, N.M.: IOCOM, a provider of videoconferencing and collaboration solutions, was featured in today’s launch of eight “Connect New Mexico” telepresence rooms. The rooms will link learning communities across the state of New Mexico. An additional twenty five rooms will be launched in the coming weeks, allowing every university and college in the state to immersively collaborate and videoconference.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson keynoted the launch, lauding the rich collaboration anticipated in the project: “The opening of these gateways is significant to New Mexico’s economic and high-tech future,” Governor Richardson said. “We’re bringing the highest level of collaboration to every corner of the state, giving New Mexicans the opportunity to tap in to the state’s remarkable educational and economic possibilities.”

Today’s “Connect New Mexico” event connected eight new ‘gateway’ telepresence sites using IOCOM’s telepresence capability. The sites are include The University of New Mexico, New Mexico State University, Eastern New Mexico, Western New Mexico University, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Santa Fe Community College, San Juan College and The State Capitol

These sites will be utilized by universities and local businesses for collaborative learning, research, training, and business modeling in the areas of energy, environment, digital film, aerospace, and biotechnology, among others.

UNM President David Schmidly commented, "The new teleconferencing abilities will enable our faculty to partner with the other sites statewide, and we will witness its benefits in all facets of our mission - education, research, public service, and as we saw in the demo today, patient care."

The founding institutions for the “Connect New Mexico” program are UNM, NMSU, New Mexico Tech, and Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories. Ultimately, there will be 33 telepresence sites around the state connected by a secure network, all available to business, industry, and institutions of higher learning on a daily basis.