Biographical Data on New Directors


ABRAMATIC

ABRIL I ABRIL
BLOKZIJL

CERF

COHEN
DAVIDSON
FOCKLER
PISANTY
WONG

 

Directors Named by Address Supporting Organization (ASO)

ROBERT BLOKZIJL

Robert Blokzijl is a founding member of RIPE, the European open forum for IP networking. Since its foundation in 1989, he has been chairman of this organization, and was instrumental in the creation of RIPE NCC in 1992 as the first Regional Internet Registry in the world.

Prior to this, he has been active in building networks for the particle physics community in Europe.

Robert Blokzijl graduated from the University of Amsterdam (1970) and holds a doctorate in experimental physics from the same university (1977). He is currently employed by the National Institute of Nuclear Physics and High Energy Physics (NIKHEF).

KEN FOCKLER

Ken Fockler is the President of Tenac Consulting, a company he founded in 1997 after the wrap up of CA*net Networking Inc. where he was President from 1992 to 1997.

CA*net was a federally incorporated non-profit organization of regional networks that came together to create and manage a national backbone network in Canada. Prior to CA*net Ken was with IBM Canada Ltd. and was instrumental in founding NetNorth in 1984, a coast to coast university network connected to BITNET and EARN. In 1996 he helped establish CAIP, the Canadian Association of Internet Providers, and served as the first chairman and President.

From 1992 to 1997 he served on the board of directors of CANARIE, the Canadian Network for the Advancement of Research, Industry and Education. He serves on the board of the CA*net Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to the development and use of the Internet for the public good. He served a one-year term on the board of ARIN, the American Registry for Internet Numbers, and an additional year as an officer of ARIN in the role of Treasurer.

Ken recently served on a Panel of Experts for WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization, for a study on domain names.

In 1996 Ken received the Chairman's Award from CBTA, the Canadian Business Telecommunications Association, for his outstanding contribution to the Canadian Telecommunications Industry.

He is a graduate of the University of Toronto, Engineering Physics 1961, and is married with three grown daughters.

PINDAR WONG

Pindar Wong is the Chairman of the Asia & Pacific Internet Association, Executive Committee Chairman of the Asia Pacific Regional Internet Conference on Operational Technologies, advisor to the Asia Pacific Networking Group and member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Cisco Systems' Internet Protocol Journal. He is also the Chairman of VeriFi (Hong Kong) Ltd., a discrete Internet infrastructure consultancy.

Previously he co-founded Hong Kong's first licensed ISP in 1993, was the alternate chair of Asia Pacific Network Information Centre and was appointed by the Internet Architecture Board to the Policy Oversight Committee.

Prior to his involvement in commercial Internet services, he was a doctoral candidate and Sir Edward Youde research fellow at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Before gaining his doctoral fellowship, Mr. Wong was briefly a banker after graduating with 1st class honors in computing science from the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine.

 

Directors Named by Domain Name Supporting Organization (DNSO)

AMADEU ABRIL I ABRIL

Amadeu Abril i Abril (mailto:Amadeu@nominalia.com) teaches European Union Law, Competition Law, and IT Law at ESADE Law School, Ramon Llull University (a private University based in Barcelona). He also is an attorney-at-law specialising in distribution contracts, competition law and IT law. He was admitted to the Barcelona Bar in 1985, where he currently serves as Secretary to its Competition Law & Policy Section. Between 1986 and 1988 he worked at the European Commission’s Directorate General for Competition Policy.

His private practice has been significantly reduced since 1997, as he has been acting as a consultant on Internet and e-commerce affairs to a number of European companies, most notably as Legal & Policy Advisor to Nominalia Internet SL, a domain-name registrar. He has been and is also involved in a number of pro-bono Net-related initiatives, such as BCNet, a local community network; a pioneering project on electronic democracy (http://bcnet.upc.es/democ.htm); and the domini .ct campaign, a 7000+ adherents strong campaign seeking the recognition of a TLD aimed for the Catalan-speaking cultural community. He has been specially involved in all the DNS reform process that eventually has brought ICANN into existence. He was elected to the gTLD-MoU Policy Oversight Committee. He was a member of the DNSO Names Council representing the Registrars Constituency until his selection for the ICANN Board of Directors, and co-chaired DNSO Working Group A on uniform dispute resolution policy.

Amadeu Abril i Abril obtained his law degree from the University of Barcelona in 1985, and continued his legal education in different post-graduate and research programs at the Centre Européen Universtaire of the University of Nancy II (France), the Institut d’Études Européenes of the Free University Brussels (Belgium) and the European University Institute at Florence (Italy).

JONATHAN COHEN

Jonathan Cohen is the Senior, Managing Partner of the Shapiro Cohen Group of Intellectual Property Practices, located in Ottawa, Canada. He has practised in all areas of intellectual property (IP) law since 1971, and has lectured and written extensively both in Canada and internationally on various aspects of trade-mark law, including, more recently, domain name issues. Mr. Cohen is actively involved in numerous national and international IP organizations, such as FICPI, AIPPI, AIPLA, INTA, IPIC, IPBA, LES, MARQUES, APLA, CBA, and IBA, which collectively represent the interests of all categories of intellectual property stakeholders, including small and large businesses, and individuals. Mr. Cohen has taken an active role in Internet governance reform and the ICANN formation process from the start, beginning with his participation in the WIPO-IAHC meetings in Geneva in 1997, through the formation of the DNSO, and ultimately the Intellectual Property Constituency, where he served as the IPC’s first President and Names Council representative until his election to this Board. Mr. Cohen has also co-chaired Working Groups A and B, and worked on the Registrars’ Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy.

Mr. Cohen holds a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Carleton University (1967) and Bachelor of Laws degree from Osgoode Hall Law School (1969).

ALEJANDRO PISANTY

Alejandro Pisanty is currently Director of Computing Academic Services at UNAM, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, in Mexico City, Mexico. He also serves as Chairman of the Board of CUDI, Corporación Universitaria para el Desarrollo de Internet, the Mexican Internet 2 Consortium, as well as of ISOC Mexico. He has served UNAM as Coordinator of the Distance Education Project (1995-1997), Technical Secretary of the Computing Advisory Council (1991-1997) and Head of the Graduate School in Chemistry (1993-1995). He is a Professor in the School of Chemistry. From UNAM he also leads the National Network for Videoconference in Education.

Mr. Pisanty received a Bachelor´s degree in Chemistry, and M. Sc and Ph. D. Degrees in Physical Chemistry from UNAM. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Max-Planck-Institut für Festkörperforschung in Stuttgart, Germany (1984-1986).

 

Directors Named by Protocol Supporting Organization (PSO)

 

JEAN-FRANÇOIS ABRAMATIC

Jean-François Abramatic is Chairman of W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium. Formerly Associate Director of the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (1997-1998) and Director of Development and Industrial Relations at INRIA (1992-1999), he was responsible for establishing the European branch of W3C in partnership with MIT LCS in 1995. He was the General Chairman of the Fifth International World Wide Web Conference that was held in Paris in May 1996.

Jean-François was asked by the French government to prepare a report entitled "Le Développement Technique de l'Internet". The report was published in June 1999.

His areas of expertise include networking, image processing and graphics.

Jean-François received his Master's degree from Ecole des Mines in Nancy and his PhD from the University of Paris VI.

VINTON G. CERF

Vinton G. Cerf is senior vice president of Internet Architecture and Technology for MCI WorldCom. Cerf is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocol, the communications protocol that gave birth to the Internet and which is commonly used today. In December 1997, President Clinton presented the U.S. National Medal of Technology to Cerf and his partner, Robert E. Kahn, for founding and developing the Internet.

Prior to rejoining MCI in 1994, Cerf was vice president of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI). As vice president of MCI Digital Information Services from 1982-1986, he led the engineering of MCI Mail, the first commercial email service to be connected to the Internet.

During his tenure from 1976-1982 with the U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Cerf played a key role leading the development of Internet and Internet-related data packet and security technologies.

Cerf served as founding president of the Internet Society from 1992-1995 and as the chairman of the Board from 1998-1999. He is a fellow of the IEEE, ACM, American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.

Cerf holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from Stanford University and Master of Science and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from UCLA. He also holds honorary Doctorates from the University of the Balearic Islands, ETH in Switzerland, Capitol College and Gettysburg College.

PHILIP DAVIDSON

Phil Davidson is Head of BT Group Standards in the BT Group Engineering and Technology Directorate. In this role he works closely with many Network Operators around the world where BT has partnerships and operational linkages.

For the last three years he has been a member of the European Telecommunication Standards Institute (ETSI) Board. As a Board Member he played a leading role in the establishment of the Global Partnership Project for Third Generation Mobile (3GPP) standards, and is currently a member of the Project Co-ordination Group. He has also participated in the Key Strategy Groups of ETSI. In recent years he has also attended the Federation of the Electronics Industry Board (FEI).

At National level, he is the Co-ordinator and Head of delegation to the ITU-T SG13 and SG11, and represents BT at the ITU-T TSAG Committee, World Telecommunications Standards Assembly (WTSA) and Plenipotentiary Conference.

Prior to being involved in Standardisation activities, Phil Davidson has worked on Transmission Planning and Works, Data Strategy and International event organising.

Phil Davidson graduated from Salford University with a first class degree in Electrical Engineering Science in 1968. He is married with two children and spends recreation time watching soccer, gardening, walking and philately.

 


Page modified 27-October-99