Dr. Shamil Kaddoury Talal, a member of the Faculty of Science/Physics Dept at the University of Zakho participated in a funded program from 15th to 20th of May 2017 for completing Building a Remote Experimentation Network for serving higher education teachers and students in Iraq (REXNet) project. This project is granted and supported by the United States International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX) and sponsored by the US–Iraq Higher Education Partnerships Program (HEPP). It is a collaboration between the Oklahoma State University (OSU) and three universities in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, namely the University of Zakho, the University of Duhok, and Duhok Polytechnic University. The amount of the grant was 51,000 US Dollars for the three universities, in which 17,000 USD for the University of Zakho. The aim of the project is to use Virtual Labs for serving students and teachers of Physics and computer sciences departments from those three universities. In addition, it aims to develop an online virtual laboratory targeting computer science and engineering students.

The program was held in the Department of Computer Science, College of Arts and Science, Oklahoma State University in the USA. This event highlighted several interesting software and a new instrument that is related to online labs (i.e. Unity Lab Module Tutorials, Virtual Reality power wall Demonstration, HoloLens Demonstration, and Haptic Demonstration). Furthermore, it included a new Robotic laboratory demo, given by Dr. Crick from OSU. Finally, for increasing collaborative work and research activities between University of Zakho and OSU, OSU has purchased a new version of HTC VIVE Headset (Virtual Reality) under the REXNet project grant. It is currently hosted by the University of Duhok that will be used for three universities, Zakho, Duhok, and Duhok Polytechnic.

To have an overview of REXNet, open the link below after installing “Unity Web Player”: External Link