Extend

GRENA

Organization full name: Georgian Research and Educational Networking Association

Website: http://www.grena.ge

Address: 7, E.Mindeli str., 0186 Tbilisi, Georgia

Contact person: Givi Kochoradze

E-mail: gcp@ip.osgf.ge

The Georgian Research and Educational Networking Association (GRENA www.grena.ge) is non-profit organization established in 1999. The founders of GRENA are: Georgian National Academy of Sciences, five major state universities and Open Society - Georgia Foundation. The main fields of activity of GRENA are: Development of modern communication infrastructure that will connect Georgian research and educational institutions, libraries, academic hospitals, international organizations working in educational field and their programs into one information system and development of information technologies in Georgia.

Starting from 1999 GRENA participated in 5 European Commission Framework Programme projects, in 9 NATO Networking Infrastructure projects and 8 OSI Information Program projects.

GRENA is deeply involved in secondary school computerization project of Ministry of Education and Science “Deer Leap Georgia”. GRENA is providing expertise and consultation for the project, taking part in the installation of computers and local area network infrastructure at schools and providing installation and maintenance of educational application servers located at GRENA NOC. GRENA is also providing technical support for schools and monitoring and analysis of Internet usage. From March 2007 GRENA is implementing network operation center services for the Georgian secondary schools. This network is based on virtual private network (VPN) concept and will provide Internet services to approximately 2200 schools by the end of the year.

GRENA is running Regional Cisco Network Academy, CERT-Georgia and is providing trainings in ICT field.
GRENA participated in European Commission projects Tristan-East N37676 (EC); Ideal-East N977122 (EC); Idealist-Extend N15813 (EC); Idealist 7fp (EC) N045059; IT Infrastructure and e-commerce as the New Method of Work and Organization N90064; NATO Infrastructure grant connected with computer scientific network in Georgia; ISTC grant N997 “Creation and investigation of photo detectors on the base of porous silicon for visible and ultraviolet range of spectrum”; STCU foundation currently ongoing grant “Creation of dielectric conditions in narrow band semiconductors, N3641, several TACIS projects, etc.