Deputy To Manager and Commissioner of Open Government and ICT for strategic planning of ICT and resources at Rovira i Virgili University (Digital Strategist)
Member of the eIDAS Toolbox Process Expert Group (EUDI Wallet)
Convenor Educational credentials use case at EBP (EBSI)
Convenor Educational credentials and professional qualifications use case at eIDAS ToolBox Process
Member of the OOTS & EUDI Wallet Synergies and Interoperability Contact Group
DC4EU Educational credentials and Professional qualifications WP leader
Pål Axelsson is currently leading the Swedish Academic Identity Federation SWAMID that he has been part of since it was created 15 years ago. In his work with SWAMID Pål specializes in identity federation policies and contributes to this area within REFEDS. Pål has since the mid-nineties worked at Uppsala University with AAI architecture until he left for a full-time work with SWAMID at the Swedish NREN SUNET in 2016.
Edward Balas has been developing technical solutions for the R&E community since leaving the industry in the early 2000s. He is currently the Measurement and Analysis Group Lead at ESnet and is the head of the MetrANOVA consortium. His prior experience includes extensive work with Software Defined Networking, Security Analytics, and Network Modeling.
Dr Tim Chown is the Network Development Manager for Jisc, who operate Janet, the UK's research and education network. He has been active in the R&E networking community for over 25 years, having been involved in the formation of eduroam within the TERENA TF-MOBILITY WG and early European IPv6 deployment projects such as 6NET. More recently he has participated in the large-scale data challenges run by the CERN experiment community and the associated research networking performance tests.
Tim's interests include network performance and monitoring, IPv6, network security, and network automation. He is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Southampton and an active contributor to the IETF, where he co-chairs the happy WG that seeks to improve browser connectivity behaviour and serves on the Internet and Operations Area Directorates.
Matteo Colantonio has been an Optical Network Engineer at Consortium GARR since 2021. Matteo holds a B.Eng. in Electronic Engineering from La Sapienza University of Rome (2017) and an M.Sc. in Photonic Engineering from the Eindhoven University of Technology and the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa (2020).
Mike Erickson is associate vice president for Community Engagement at Internet2, a role he has held since January, 2020. In this capacity he has responsibility for community relationships, membership, and engagement opportunities and programming across the US research and education community.
Prior to working at Internet 2, Mike served as Chief Information Officer at two US universities, most recently at Colorado School of Mines. He is a champion for celebrating and leveraging the diversity that we enjoy throughout the R&E community.
Full Professor at the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering. Teaching and conducting research in the areas of complex networks, service management architectures, cyber security and cloud/edge computing. Has published over 150 papers in various international journals and conferences and participated in a number of national and international projects. Head of the faculty CSIRT and a representative in ACM Women in Computing.
Lise joined GÉANT as CEO in November 2024.
Lise has served as Director General of ETNO, the Brussels-based association representing Europe’s leading telecom operators, for nine years. In August 2022 Lise was nominated as a member of the United Nations Internet Governance Forum Leadership Panel. From 2023 – 2025 she was Chair of the Danish Cyber security organisation “Security Tech Space”, and from 2017 until 2024, Lise was a Board member of European Cyber Security Organisation (ECSO). She served from 2016-2022 as Chairwoman of the Boards of Public Interest Registry (.org domain name registry) and the Public Technical Identifiers (PTI), formerly IANA, and affiliate of ICANN.
From 2009 to 2016, Lise was Chief Operating Officer of DK Hostmaster and DIFO, the company managing .dk domain names. From September 2014 to October 2016, Lise also chaired the Cross Community Working Group for the IANA Stewardship Transition, building on her strong network within the internet community. Lise has over 20 years of experience within the internet, technology, and telecoms industries and is a lifelong member of ATV – the Danish Academy of Technical Sciences – an independent think tank.
Jane Gifford has built a diverse international career in media, marketing, and communications spanning several decades. She began her career in creative services, publicity, and editorial roles with leading media organisations in London, Sydney, Los Angeles, and New York. Since returning to Australia a decade ago, she has held communications roles across the arts, higher education, and technology sectors. Jane is currently Director of Marketing and Communications at AARNet, Australia’s NREN, where she drives strategic marketing and communications to position AARNet’s technologies and services and highlight their impact on research and education. A passionate storyteller, she enjoys shaping narratives that connect audiences with the transformative power of technology.
Teresa has over 30 years’ experience in Human Resources, Employment & Workplace Relations. She is a globally recognised leader in the design and delivery of leadership development training programmes, including mentoring programmes, and executive leadership coaching. Teresa has a strong track record of achieving positive and lasting change on initiatives pertaining to diversity & inclusion, gender-based violence, legislative change, Collective Agreement & Union negotiations, complex workplace investigations, acquisitions & divestitures, cultural change programmes, workforce management & structural design, and Board & CEO planning & recruitment. Teresa is currently developing and leading the Global Leadership Development Programme for our global NREN community.
Chin Guok is the CTO and Planning and Innovation Department Head at ESnet, DOE’s high performance network user facility. He has been involved in network engineering at ESnet for over 25 years, architecting specialized overlay services within the ESnet production backbone, prototyping SDN production solutions, and facilitating design and architecture work. Most recently, he served as the lead architect for ESnet’s current network (ESnet6) that came online in mid-2022.
Ann was a student of English and History whose e-mail didn’t work. Learning what was behind a broken email system was one of the steps on a journey that took her to study computers and to become Network Operations Manager at HEAnet. A change of country and NREN to SWITCH found her moving away from the packets and fibres into ten intense, amazing years of GÉANT Activity Leadership She is now Reliability Engineering Coach at SWITCH and continues to believe in a moral imperative that NRENs must do good in what we do and how we do it. She will also talk to anyone willing to listen about standards for incident management.
Network Architect and Researcher at Optical Networks Department in CESNET, a.l.e. .
Ainamaani Isaac (born 17th July 2002) is a Ugandan software engineer currently working with the Research and Education Network for Uganda (RENU). He holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Makerere University.
Sara is the product manager for eduroam at Internet2. Previously, she served as lead program manager for Internet2's cloud infrastructure and platform services offerings.
Raj Kettimuthu is a computer scientist and group leader at Argonne. His research interests include advanced data communication tools for science and quantum networking.
Vojdan Kjorveziroski is a research and teaching assistant at the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering in Skopje, North Macedonia. He is also currently a PhD student and is taking an active role in multiple international research projects. His main interests include cloud computing, cybersecurity, and distributed systems.
Sergejs Kozlovičs is a leading researcher (a mathematician and computer scientist) at the Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Latvia. He is also an associate professor at the University of Latvia. Currently, Sergejs is focusing on quantum communications and quantum-secure cryptography, in particular, on how to connect the Classical and the Quantum Internet. His other interests include mathematical foundations of Computer Science, algorithms, quantum computing, web and semantic web technologies.
Sergejs received the Werner von Siemens Excellence Award for his PhD thesis on software architecture. He is also a hexadecimal dollar owner — an award issued by famous computer scientist Donald E. Knuth, professor emeritus of the Art of Computer Programming at Stanford University.
Roman Łapacz is a network systems researcher at the Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Center. Additionally, he is a member of the GN5-1 Network Platform team (WP6 Task 2), where he focuses on developing programmable network infrastructure, virtualization, automation, and orchestration solutions.
Davina Luyten is communications officer at Belnet. She has a background in translation, journalism and multilingual corporate communication. At Belnet, she focuses on external communication, public relations, crisis communication and security awareness. She has participated in the GÉANT project since 2020, where her involvement includes the annual cyber security awareness campaign.
Tanja is a Public Affairs Officer in GÉANT’s EU Liaison Team. As part of her role, she wrestles with EU legislation and helps the team in providing long-term navigation to GÉANT’s governance and the NRENs. Her work focuses on bridging the gap between policy and practice, “translating” and dissecting what happens in the European institutions.
Matt Mullins is the Associate Director for Senior Network Engineering at Internet2 (US national Research & Education network) where he leads their senior network engineering team. He is currently focusing on Internet2's upcoming packet platform refresh for the core network as well as using AI to figure out how we can use it to troubleshoot operational issues on the network.
Brenda Namuli is a Systems Engineer at the Research and Education Network for Uganda (RENU), with over five years of experience in cloud infrastructure, identity federation, and automation. She works on designing and supporting OpenStack-based cloud environments, containerized services, and national eduroam deployments that serve universities and research institutions across Uganda. Brenda is passionate about open-source technologies, resilient infrastructure, and empowering institutions through practical, scalable solutions.
Karl Newell is a Network Software Architect at Internet2 (US national Research & Education network) where he leads their network automation and orchestration efforts. He is currently focusing on helping the Internet2 community jump start and expand their network automation endeavors as well as diving into AI to figure out how we can use it to manage networks.
Brian Nisbet is the Service Operations Manager at HEAnet, the Irish NREN. He's responsible for a wide range of HEAnet's client facing and internal services. He is also involved in new service evolution, DR/BCP activities, security planning and response and whatever else happens to come along! He has been with HEAnet since 2001. Brian is also Co-Chair of the RIPE Anti-Abuse WG.
In his spare time he plays a lot of games and tries to find ways to make them even more awesome than they already are!
As associate vice president for NET+ at Internet2, Sean O'Brien provides leadership for service development with commercial cloud providers, vendor management, training and workforce development, and architecture and engineering for Internet2’s research and higher education cloud programs and services.
Jörg Pareigis is an assistant professor in Business Administration and director of library including the Centre for Teaching and Learning at Karlstad University, Sweden. He has vast experience of developing open online graduate courses for lifelong learning based on strategically important research centres at Karlstad University and is co-organizer of the open online course ONL - www.opennetworkedlearning.se.
Cornelia Puhze is an IT security awareness specialist at SWITCH. As part of SWITCH-CERT, she supports the Swiss education, research and innovation community in dealing with the human factor in information security. Her aim is to help people understand and care about cyber threats and how to better protect their data. Cornelia is educated to postgraduate level in multilingual, corporate and political communications and has a background in language teaching.
Solution Architect at GÉANT for software development
Janfred is an eduroam expert, working at DFN. He has been around eduroam since 2014, when he started at the IT department at the University Bremen as a student assistant in the WiFi team, and switched to DFN in 2021.
In his bachelor thesis he analyzed the security of the eduroam login process. Currently he works on several ongoing standardization efforts at the IETF.
Toby Rodwell studied Electrical & Electronic Engineering at the University of Nottingham. After graduating, Toby served in the Royal Navy as a Weapon Engineering Officer, leaving in 2001 in order to pursue a career in IT and telecommunications.
Toby joined GÉANT (then DANTE) in June 2003 as a network engineer. He was the first manager of DANTE's in-house Network Operations Centre, and then in 2013 became head of the newly established Service Management team. He was appointed Activity Leader of "Service Management and Operations" in the GN3 Plus project and continued this role into GN4, as leader of Work Package 9 ("Operations Support"), covering the GÉANT Operations Centre, project software Governance and support, GÉANT network services management, and GÉANT operations systems development. His core competencies include IP engineering, Operational Support Systems and ITIL. Toby is a member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology and a Chartered Engineer.
Olaf holds a master´s degree in Computer Science and Telematics from NTNU and works as the head of the research and education network in Sikt, Norway.
Jessica is a security engineer at Switch, the Swiss national research and education network. She mostly works to improve the security of the universities. You can find her on site during a major incident or back in the lab during forensic investigations. She loves everything related to DNS and is passionate about information security. She enjoys sharing this passion with other people.
Goran Škvarč graduated political science at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Political Science in 2000 and completed a postgraduate professional study programme at National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Department of Economics and Political Science.
He began his professional career in 2003 in the Ministry for European Integration as an analyst. The same year he joined the Croatian Academic and Research Network – CARNET, where he held various positions over the years, from Expert associate, Head of special programs and projects (2005-2008), Head of business communications (2008-2012), to Coordinator of information and public relations (2012-2016) and Coordinator of international cooperation (2016-2020). In December 2020, he was appointed Deputy CEO for Education Support. After that, he moved to the position of Advisor to the CEO of CARNET for public administration.
He managed the Online Database Center as the chief negotiator and procurator of national licenses for access to scientific and professional journals on behalf of the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports, and was the head of procurement of educational microcomputers for the ProMikro project.
He is a member of the Board of Directors of the World Bank’s Global Development Learning Network for the ECA region and has also worked as a consultant on projects for the development of international cooperation and the capacity of academic networks in Southeast Europe.
In December 2023, he was appointed Deputy CEO for International Cooperation.
Current coordinator of the Italian Identity Federation IDEM and GARR's DPO, he serves also as the eduGAIN service owner in the GÈANT project. He holds a Master degree in History and a post-graduate diploma from the Faculty of Engineer in Internet Technology.
Karel van Klink is a Network Engineer at GÉANT in the Network Evolution team. With a bachelors degree in Technical Computer Science and a masters in Internet Science & Technology, his research ranges from the applicability of Quantum Key Distribution in the GÉANT network to facial recognition on statues of Roman Emperors. Currently, he is working on orchestration and automation of services in the GÉANT network.
Dr Domenico Vicinanza is a Senior Research Engagement Manager and the Coordinator for Arts and Humanities at GÉANT. He is also an Associate Professosr of Intelligent Systems and Data Science at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. He received his PhD in physics working at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN, Geneva) and he is a professional music composer and orchestrator.
He worked for more than a decade as a Scientific Associate at CERN, where he was a member of the Offline Board for the ALICE experiment and worked on research and development for particle physics detectors.
He has an active collaboration with CERN on auditory display, and with NASA, writing music from data collected by the Voyager 1 and 2 space probes and Mars missions.
His research interests are on the applications of scientific data sonification in physics, neurobiology and motor control.
Frans Ward is a Senior Technical Product Manager at SURF and has been responsible for innovation projects in the area of Trust and Identity, Service Delivery and Educational Services. For the past five years his focus was mainly on Open Badges and Micro-credentialing, the Open Educational API and Open Educational Resources; projects that are part of the SURF innovation programme 'Education Innovation with IT'. Frans studied Business Information Technology at Rotterdam University. After working at the Erasmus University IT department for more than 12 years he joined SURFnet in 1999.
