Who's Who in GÉANT2

Each activity strand within GÉANT2 is led by an individual drawn from the research and education networking organisations that are participating in the project. This page presents short biographies of these key people (listed alphabetically by organisation and surname):

Dai Davies (DANTE) - Connections to Other World Regions
Michael Enrico (DANTE) - Technology and Service Testing
Miloš Karapandžic (DANTE) - Project Co-ordination
Dale Robertson (DANTE) - Dissemination, User Support and Events
Toby Rodwell (DANTE) - Support for Multi-Domain Services
Matthew Scott (DANTE) - Procurement
Nicolas Simar (DANTE) - Performance Monitoring and Measurement
Marian García Vidondo (DANTE) - Network Operations
Jürgen Rauschenbach (DFN) - Roaming and Authorisation
Afrodite Sevasti (GRNET) - Bandwidth on Demand
Christoph Graf (SWITCH) - Network Security
Valentino Cavalli (TERENA) - Co-ordination of Research and Development, NREN Development and Support
Bert van Pinxteren (TERENA) - NREN Development and Support
Karel Vietsch (TERENA) - EARNEST Foresight Study

Dai Davies (DANTE)

Dai Davies Connections to Other World Regions

Dai Davies has been General Manager of DANTE for 11 years. He has degrees in engineering and computer science from Cambridge University, and has considerable experience of the translation between technology and service in a broad range of communications activities.

Dai has worked for various European telecoms operators for over 15 years, both in technical and commercial positions. Before coming to DANTE he was director of the COSINE Project Management Unit. Within GÉANT2, he is responsible for leading the development of GÉANT2's connectivity to other world regions.

Michael Enrico (DANTE)

Michael Enrico Technology and Service Testing

Michael Enrico received his BSc and PhD degrees in physics from Lancaster University in 1991 and 1995. In 1997 he joined what is now BTexact Technologies. In 2000, he joined a telecommunications startup as a network architect, where he had responsibility for designing a novel platform capable of supporting wholesale secure broadband access and VPN services with a pan-European footprint.

In December 2001, Michael joined the Network Engineering and Planning team in DANTE, where he now works on projects concerned with the future of pan-European research and education networking. In May 2003 he was promoted to Network Planning Manager. Within GÉANT2, Michael has specific responsibilty for the joint research activity associated with technology and service testing.

Miloš Karapandžic (DANTE)

Project Co-ordination

Miloš Karapandžic has been working for DANTE as Project Manager on GÉANT2 and other related projects since November 2002. Before joining DANTE, Milos worked for Analysys Ltd, a telecoms consultancy also based in Cambridge, UK.

After graduating in English Language and Literature at the University of Nis, Yugoslavia in 1999, he completed a Masters course in English and Applied Linguistics at the University of Cambridge in 2001.

Dale Robertson (DANTE)

Dale Robertson Dissemination, User Support and Events

Dale Robertson joined DANTE in May 2002 as Public Relations Manager, and has responsibility for dissemination, user support and events activity for GÉANT2. Dale lived in Brussels for six years, working initially inside the European Commission and European Parliament, and then in the External Relations department of Sony Europe. She joined the British Broadcasting Corporation, working as European Affairs Manager before returning to London to work in BBC Broadcast.

Dale has extensive knowledge of EU institutional workings, and of European public policy in the area of "converging" technologies and the Information Society. She has also spent spells living and working in France and Italy. Prior to joining DANTE, Dale worked for several years as an IT systems implementation consultant.

Toby Rodwell (DANTE)

Toby Rodwell Support for Multi-Domain Services

Toby Rodwell studied Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Nottingham, gaining his BEng(Hons) in 1993. After graduating, Toby served in the Royal Navy, leaving in 2001 in order to pursue a career in IT and telecommunications. Having qualified as a Cisco Certified Network Professional, he joined Convergys EMEA Ltd. Based in Cambridge, Toby was responsible for the day-to-day operations of the enterprise network, with particular responsibility for network monitoring, record keeping and asset management.

Toby joined DANTE in June 2003 as a network engineer in the operations team. His interests lie in network monitoring, security and routing, and he is the Operations point of contact for QoS issues. He is leading GÉANT2's activities in working towards the provision of guaranteed end-to-end quality of service to network users.

Matthew Scott (DANTE)

Matthew Scott Procurement

Matthew joined DANTE in June 1996 as Commercial Manager responsible for the financial operation of DANTE, and became Chief Financial Officer in February 2003. He is qualified as a Chartered Accountant and holds an Engineering degree from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

Matthew has considerable experience in procurement and commercial negotiations, having been involved in the procurements for four of the pan-European networks that DANTE has implemented, as well as procurement for TEIN2 and ALICE, and has extensive knowledge of the international telecoms carrier market. Matthew is leading the procurement activity for GÉANT2.

Nicolas Simar (DANTE)

Nicolas Simar Performance Monitoring and Measurement

Nicolas Simar graduated from the University of Liege with a MA in Computer Science Engineering, and now works in the Network Engineering and Planning team at DANTE. He is playing a key role in efforts to ensure the alignment and interoperability of European performance monitoring initiatives and Internet2's End-to-End Performance Initiative Performance Environment System, in order to provide performance information seamlessly to users in Europe and the USA.

Nicolas is also involved in the IST EGEE project (Enabling GRIDs for E-sciencE), contributing to the activity focused on the interactions of the Grid environment, and in particular between the EGEE Grid middleware and networks. Nicolas is involved in the engineering of the GÉANT network. He took part in the IST SEQUIN project, the goal of which was to study IP Quality of Service in a multi-domain environment, and in the deployment of several IP QoS services on GÉANT. Nicolas’s main responsibility in GÉANT2 is the coordination of the pan-European initiative on multi-domain performance monitoring.

Marian García Vidondo (DANTE)

Marian Garcia Vidondo Network Operations

Marian García Vidondo finished her masters degree in Telecommunication Engineering in 1999 at the Public University of Navarra (Spain), receiving a scholarship which allowed her to work in the Computer Service of this University during her last year. At the end of 1999 she moved to England, working as a Software Engineer at Techne Ltd (Duxford) developing embedded software for electronic devices.

In April 2000 Marian became part of the Operations team at DANTE, working on day-to-day operational issues as well as on the introduction of new services in the network. She has participated in the deployment of multicast and IPv6 services in GÉANT. Since January 2003 Marian has occupied the position of Operations Manager at DANTE. She is leading activities in GÉANT2 concerned with network operations.

Jürgen Rauschenbach (DFN)

Juergen Rauschenbach Roaming and Authorisation

Juergen Rauschenbach has a degree in mathematics from the Yerevan State University (1974) and holds a Dr. rer. nat. with a thesis based on the implementation of the Transport Layer of the computer network DELTA (1986). In 1990 he joined DFN, and became one of the developers of the DFN IP Service. Since 1997 he has worked in the DFN development project group, where he is mainly responsible for Gigabit Testbeds and Internet-related projects (IPv6, Quality of Service, mobile IP, Voice over IP).

Juergen's current main areas of work are mobile networks, authentication and authorisation, and optical networks. He is leading GÉANT2's joint research activities in the areas of roaming and authorisation.

Afrodite Sevasti (GRNET)

Bandwidth on Demand

Afrodite Sevasti received her Diploma and MSc degree in Computer Engineering and Informatics from Patras University (Greece). She also holds an MSc degree in Information Networking from the Information Networking Institute of Carnegie Mellon University. She has worked as an R&D Computer Engineer for several years at the RA Computer Technology Institute (Greece), and she currently holds the position of Network Services Development Manager at the Greek Research and Technology Network (GRNET) S.A.

Her main interests and expertise lie in technologies and architectures of high performance networks, in traffic and network resources management, provisioning of Quality of Service (QoS), SLAs and pricing/billing of next-generation networks. She has published 20 papers in well-known refereed conferences and journals. She has participated in several R&D projects, including the IST SEQUIN project that led to the deployment of several IP QoS services on GÉANT. She is also involved in the IST EGEE project (Enabling GRIDs for E-sciencE), contributing to the activity focused on network resources provisioning to the Grid environment. Afrodite’s main responsibility in GÉANT2 is the coordination of the pan-European initiative on multi-domain Bandwidth on Demand provisioning.

Christoph Graf (SWITCH)

Christoph Graf Network Security

Christoph Graf is Head of Network Security for SWITCH. He completed his education with a Masters' degree “Dipl. Elektro-Ingenieur ETH” at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich. After his studies, he worked for four years as a designer of integrated circuits with Philips.

Christoph joined SWITCH in 1991 as an application engineer, moving into the networking group later. Before rejoining SWITCH in 1998 as head of security and system administration, he worked as network engineer for DANTE and then as networking consultant for Sun Microsystems. Today he is responsible for the security group, including SWITCH-CERT, and is leading SWITCH’s project AAI on authentication and authorisation. Christoph is leading GÉANT2's research activities in the area of network security.

Valentino Cavalli (TERENA)

Valentino Cavalli Co-ordination of Research and Development, NREN Development and Support

Valentino Cavalli is Deputy Chief Technical Officer at TERENA. He joined the organisation in May 1999 as a Project Development Officer. His tasks include managing technical projects, contributing to TERENA policies and management activities, and assisting the TERENA task forces. Valentino is currently the secretary of TF-NGN, the task force on Next-Generation Networking, which undertakes testing of innovative networking technologies, including the piloting of new services on the GÉANT backbone. In recent years he has worked in the SERENATE project, and in the SEEREN project, where he organised the NATO/SEEREN Policy Workshop for NRENs in South East Europe, held in Varna in September 2003.

Valentino is leading two areas of work in the GÉANT2 project: the co-ordination of research and technical development activities, and assistance to research and education networking in less-advanced regions.

Bert van Pinxteren (TERENA)

Bert van Pinxteren NREN Development and Support

Bert van Pinxteren is responsible for the day-to-day financial and legal affairs of the TERENA Secretariat. He also provides support for the General Assembly and Executive Committee, and has overall responsibility for conference organisation. He joined TERENA in September 1998. Within GÉANT2, Bert is responsible for the TERENA Compendium (now funded as part of the project).

Karel Vietsch (TERENA)

Karel Vietsch EARNEST Foresight Study

Karel Vietsch is the Secretary General of TERENA, and is responsible to the TERENA Executive Committee for the functioning of the TERENA Secretariat. His responsibilities include the day-to-day management of TERENA staff and activities, and leadership in a number of (mostly policy-oriented) projects.

Karel has a significant task in representing TERENA in contacts with other organisations of many different kinds. Within the GÉANT2 project, his responsibilities include the area of NREN development and support, and the foresight study that will be carried out later in the project.