GPN & ARE-ON Joint Conference 2026

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

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.

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

In this presentation, we will discuss external and internal forces that are dramatically changing the higher education ecosystem in conjunction with the exponential rate of change impacting IT. The impact of multiple and dynamic changes in funding, agentic AI, data quality, post-quantum encryption, culture, and ERPs, on pedagogy, research, and administration are core to the discussion. We will discuss how to successful to pivot an Education IT organization in this era of non-trivial transformation.

The OAK Supercomputing Consortium's Cimarron high-performance computing system is nearing operational status and will be available at no cost to researchers at institutions across Arkansas, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Chris Frennell, Interim Director of the OAK Supercomputing Consortium, provides an overview of Cimarron's capabilities, how regional researchers can gain access, and what the consortium's shared infrastructure model means for HPC availability across the three-state area.

This keynote presents research on how IT organizations can build resilience in the face of environmental turbulence by focusing on the foundational pillars of IT service quality (people) and IT governance (process). Drawing on a study of 157 IT leaders, it demonstrates that resilience is not reactive, but proactively developed through mature governance practices and a strong service culture. Attendees will gain practical, research-backed insights on how to strengthen their IT organizations to adapt, recover, and lead through disruption.

Attendees will leave with a clear, actionable framework to strengthen IT organizational resilience by intentionally advancing IT service quality (people) and IT governance maturity (process), enabling them to lead their organizations more effectively through disruption.

Meeting Audience: CIOs / CTOs, VPs of IT

Join this conversation with veterans and newcomers to the field of project management and grants acquisition to explore ideas and options as the funding scenarios for science and education evolve.