Professor Gerry McKenna, the University of Ulster's vice-chancellor, has been appointed a director of Britain's e-university task force. He says the project will "bring together some of the best academic minds and scholarship in the world using the latest communications technology to make it available . . . in many other parts of the world." He believes it will have "profound implications not only for higher education in the UK and Ireland but also for society and our economy." The first e-university courses are to be launched in 2002.