Welcome to the GPN & ARE-ON Joint Conference 2026 schedule. Use this page to browse sessions, view speaker and session details, and build your personal agenda for June 22–24 in Rogers, Arkansas. Check back through May as additional sessions and details are added.
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The presentation will provide an overview of the new GlobalNOC Gateway application. The application is intended to be used by members of GlobalNOC supported networks. The initial release of the application will allow for members to gain visibility into a high level status of the network, ongoing outages, upcoming maintenances, manage contact information at their institution for notification purposes, amongst many more exciting features! In this same presentation, ARE-ON Chief Technology Officer, Scott Ramoly, will announce the release of the application for use by ARE-ON's member institutions. Audience: CIOs / CTOs, IT Directors and Managers, Network Engineers and Administrators, Faculty and Academic Researchers
Manager: Monitoring and Information Systems Team, GlobalNOC at Indiana University
Ben Geels joined the GlobalNOC in 2012 as a full-stack developer on the software development team, building tools for monitoring, measurement, visualization, and information systems that support computer network management. He now serves as manager of the Monitoring and Information... Read More →
Higher Education is under attack by ghosts. I know how crazy that sounds, but according to a U.S. Department of Education press release form May 2025, approximately $90 million in federal student aid has been awarded and released to ineligible recipients in the prior three years. Your institution may have already dealt with this, is currently dealing with this, or could fall victim in the future. Our goal in this session is to learn who these ghosts are, what they want, and discuss methods used by other institutions to stop them and mitigate resulting damage left behind.
Director of Internal Audit & Risk Management, Missouri State University
Natalie B. McNish serves as the Director of Internal Audit and Risk Management at Missouri State University, where she leads efforts to strengthen governance, ensure compliance, and promote effective risk management practices. With a strong background in auditing and organizational... Read More →
Scott Ramoly, Chief Technology Officer of ARE-ON, presents the latest updates on ARE-ON's network infrastructure, services, and technical roadmap. This session covers recent enhancements, upcoming changes, and the engineering priorities shaping how ARE-ON serves its member institutions.
Building collaborations by using non-research funding mechanisms Using federal and state funding sources to imagine sustainability, collaborations, customer engagement. Audience: CIOs / CTOs, Grant Administrators and PIs, Faculty and Academic Researchers
High-performance networking is evolving rapidly, delivering dramatically more capacity while fundamentally changing the cost model. This technical session examines how high-speed coherent optics are being deployed across ARE-ON's metro and regional infrastructure — what the technology enables, how it's being implemented, and what it means for the institutions and research communities ARE-ON serves.
The Statewide Quantum Computing Working Group is a multi-disciplinary collaborative initiative launched in March 2026 to establish an integrated educational framework for quantum computing curricula across Arkansas. Led by the Emerging Analytics Center at UA Little Rock, the group brings together academic faculty from the Arkansas Quantum Network, industry partners, and technical experts to bridge expertise gaps in the field. Its primary goal is to develop shared instructional materials and identify best practices for research data management and cyberinfrastructure to prepare a highly skilled STEM workforce.
The key takeaway for attendees is the opportunity to participate in the co-development of a foundational Quantum Computing Curricula designed for use by academic institutions throughout Arkansas.
Audience: CIOs / CTOs, VPs of IT, IT Directors and Managers, Network Engineers and Administrators, Cybersecurity Professionals, HPC & Research Computing Professionals, Grant Administrators and PIs, Faculty and Academic Researchers, New and Emerging IT Professionals
