MoU signed between EGI and the Black Sea University Network

A new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed between EGI and the Black Sea Universities Network (BSUN), an initiative established in 1998 to develop a collaborative platform between the universities in the Black Sea Region of South Eastern Europe and the Caucasus region. The BSUN network includes more than 120 universities across the 12 member states of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organisation: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and Serbia.

The MoU will initially build the foundations to define a framework for long-term collaboration in order to establish interoperable and sustained e-Infrastructure services to support education and international scientific research activities. It will do this by using EGI’s expertise in federated authentication and authorization infrastructure, security and policies in order to facilitate the sharing of resources for education and research.  This work will also pave the way for involvement in European and Global initiatives such as the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and Global Open Science Cloud (GOSC).

Existing EGI initiatives, networks and NGIs within the BSUN member states will be involved in this work in order to benefit from local expertise. This will lead to stronger collaboration in the regions of South Eastern Europe and the Caucasus.