1 Stanford University, SLAC, NIIT and the Digital Divide Prepared by Les Cottrell, SLAC for the NIIT, March 18, 2005

2 Stanford University Location

3 Some facts Founded in 1890’s by Governor Leland Stanford & wife Jane –in memory of son Leland Stanford Jr. –Apocryphal story of foundation Movies invented at Stanford 1600 freshman entrants/year (12% acceptance), 7:1 student:faculty, students from 53 countries 169K living Stanford alumni

4 Some alumni Sports: Tiger Woods, John McEnroe Sally Ride Astronaut Vint Cerf “father of Internet” Industry: –Hewlett & Packard, Steve Ballmer CEO Microsoft, Scott McNealy Sun … Ex-presidents: Ehud Barak Israel, Alejandro Toledo Peru US Politics: Condoleeza Rice, George Schultz, President Hoover

5 Some Startups Founded Silicon Valley (turned orchards into companies): –Start by providing land and encouragement (investment) for companies started by Stanford alumni, such as HP & Varian –More recently: Sun (Stanford University Network), Cisco, Yahoo, Google

6 Excellence 17 Nobel prizewinners Stanford Hospital Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) – my home: –National Lab operated by Stanford University funded by US Department of Energy –Roughly 1400 staff, + contractors & outside users => 3000, ~ 2000 on site at a given time –Fundamental research in: Experimental particle physics Theoretical physics Accelerator research Synchrotron Light research –Has faculty to pursue above research and awards degrees, 3 Nobel prizewinners

7 Work with NIIT Co-supervision of students, build research capacity, publish etc., for example: –Quantify the Digital Divide: Develop a measurement infrastructure to provide information on the extent of the Digital Divide: –Within Pakistan, between Pak & other regions Improve understanding, provide planning information, expectations, identify needs Provide and deploy tools in Pakistan

8 World View S.E. Europe, Russia: catching up Latin Am., Mid East, China: keeping up India, Africa: falling behind C. Asia, Russia, S.E. Europe, L. America, M. East, China: 4- 5 yrs behind India, Africa: 7 yrs behind Important for policy makers Many institutes in developing world have less performance than a household in N. America or Europe Quality in KBytes/s Internet performance from US to Europe & India Sub-continent Factor 10 improvement in 6 years Europe India 7 years behind Keeping up

9 Compare with TAI UN Technology Achievement Index (TAI) Note how bad Africa is