Ohio is going online with a high-speed fiber-optic network that could change the way research is done here and help attract more top scientific talent. Ohio's research centers are widely dispersed, but the Third Frontier Network is a smart, strategic move to turn that seeming disadvantage into a strength.

The network will connect Ohio research universities and private research centers by a 1,600-mile dedicated fiber-optic "backbone" like none other in the nation. It will allow researchers, doctors, inventors and educators at different sites to consult and collaborate in real time and in ways not possible up till now. The pay-off could come in new high-paying jobs, lifesaving medical discoveries and a new way of achieving a critical mass of brainpower.

By June, TFN is expected to connect Ohio's public universities along with Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton and NASA's John H. Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. But this initiative by the Ohio Board of Regents will still require hard pushing and millions more dollars to fully extend the network to all the schools and research centers envisioned by this plan. That includes corporate partners.

Rod Chu, chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents, says Ohio is out ahead of other states in constructing the powerful new scientific network. We should make the most of that lead. On Monday, he presided over ceremonially connecting the University of Cincinnati's Genome Research Institute (GRI) to the high-speed network. "With the Third Frontier Network," said GRI Director David Millhorn, "we can make the entire state a virtual laboratory."

It will allow high-tech researchers and the specialists at different locations to communicate and examine findings as if in same room. It's all about sharing - high-cost instruments, expertise, advanced research. TFN is not only high-speed but high-resolution. Ohio State University Hospital's Magnetic Resonance Imaging unit includes the largest such magnet in the world. It generates 8 billion bits of data every second, beyond the carrying capacity of current fiber-optic lines. But the new TFN will be able easily to transmit such high-resolution images to remote locations. TFN also could boost Ohio researchers' computational power by linking supercomputers around the state. The regents are using a mix of Ohio capital dollars, loans and federal funds.

Ten years ago, Ohio also led the nation by creating OhioLINK to connect academic libraries at 85 Ohio institutions. That network, comparable to the great university libraries of the world, helped Ohio recruit top scholars to come here. Ohio's so-called "brain drain" isn't so much from losing its graduates. "Ohio doesn't lose any more than other states," Chu said. "But we don't attract enough new people in."

TFN will be an even more powerful magnet than OhioLINK. It's a shrewd way to do more with less, and rewire Ohio for the 21st-century economy.