Access Grid Room

The ACE network is a collective of member organisation of the Australian Mathematical Institutes (AMSI) which offers graduate and undergraduate courses remotely. The ACE room at RMIT evolved from an initiative of the international centre of excellence for education in mathematics   which established a network of subsidised Access Grid Rooms (AGRs) at Australian Mathematical Science Institute (AMSI) member universities.  There have since been multiple re-imaginings of this facility which was first located in building 8 and now is located in building 15 at RMIT.  

The ACE Room is a facility that offers an immersive experience for remote two way interactive engagement. This may be for the purpose of conducting research with distant collaborators, conducting meetings, seminars or tuition as per the ACE network program.

The ACE Room  brings together a multitude of resources including multimedia large-format displays, presentation and interactive environments, and interfaces to visualisation environments. These resources are used to support group-to-group interactions across the internet via the utilisation of a combination of digital markup software and meeting room platforms such as Teams.

The primary reason for the development of this room is to promote high level mathematical communication and interaction between AMSI member universities and external research collaborators.

Another goal is to deliver high quality honours and postgraduate courses through the ACE network. This increases the variety and quality of programs offered at RMIT and other universities within the Australian context, where expertise is widely spread geographically.

The ACE room enables RMIT to host international experts who are visiting Australia, facilitating the mathematics postgraduate community - and professionals - to particiate in such seminars and discussions. The ACE room provides a means of carrying out collaborative research with peers within Australia and internationally.  

A very successful RMIT AGR Launch was held on the 6 December 2007 for the first AGR which was housed in RMIT building 8. The event was held over the web with UNISA and Christchurch universities participating. The speakers included the RMIT Chancellor Professor Dennis Gibson AO, Professor Garth Goudry, Director of the International Centre of Excellence for Education in Mathematics at the University of Melbourne, Professor Daine Alcorn, the Pro Vice-Chancellor (Science, Engineering and Technology), and Professor John Hearne, Head of Mathematics and Geospatial Sciences. Professor Ian Town, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, joined the event online and address the event.

Dr John Boland from the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of South Australia joined Associate Professor Bill Blyth in delivering a short demonstration of the facilities capabilities. At the time the room ran the Access Grid software which was an open-source experimental system that was a precursor of modern conferencing software we are all now familiar with i.e. TEAMS, WebEx and Zoom.  

On relocation of the Mathematics Discipline to building 15 in 2019 a new ACE room was constructed and is currently housed in B015.03.10. This facility is equipped with video conferencing equipment which includes ceiling mikes, speakers with inbuilt echo cancelling, multiple ceiling cameras which can be independently controlled via an AMX control system that also is attached to a high-end computer that drives two large format digitally interactive screens. At RMIT the room drives Teams and utilises digital mark-up software such as PDFannotator.