Dr.
Vinton G. Cerf,
Vice President and
Chief Internet Evangelist Google presented 'Internet,
Infinity and
Beyond' in
Brisbane on March 8th
2007. Alessandro Sorbello hosted the press conference prior to the presentation and produced the
Film for New
Realm Media.
Vinton G. Cerf is vice president and chief
Internet evangelist for Google. In this role, he is responsible for identifying new enabling technologies to support the development of advanced Internet-based products and services from Google. He is also an active public face for Google in the Internet world.
Cerf is the former senior vice president of
Technology Strategy for
MCI. In this role, he helped to guide corporate strategy development from a technical perspective.
Previously, he served as MCI's senior vice president of Architecture and Technology, leading a team of architects and engineers to design advanced networking frameworks, including Internet-based solutions for delivering a combination of data, information, voice and video services for business and consumer use.
Widely known as one of the "Fathers of the Internet," Cerf is the co-designer of the
TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet. In
December 1997,
President Clinton presented the
U.S. National Medal of Technology to Cerf and his colleague,
Robert E. Kahn, for founding and developing the Internet.
Kahn and Cerf were named the recipients of the
ACM Alan M. Turing award, sometimes called the "
Nobel Prize of
Computer Science," in 2004 for their work on the
Internet protocols. In
November 2005,
President George Bush awarded Cerf and Kahn the
Presidential Medal of Freedom for their work. The medal is the highest civilian award given by the
United States to its citizens.
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 Advanced Research Projects Agency (
DARPA), Cerf played a key role leading the development of Internet and Internet-related packet data and security technologies.
Vint Cerf serves as chairman of the board of the Internet
Corporation for Assigned
Names and
Numbers (
ICANN). He served as founding president of the
Internet Society from 1992-1995 and in
1999 served a term as chairman of the
Board. In addition, Cerf is honorary chairman of the IPv6
Forum, dedicated to raising awareness and speeding introduction of the new
Internet protocol. Cerf served as a member of the
U.S. Presidential Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) from
1997 to
2001 and serves on several national, state and industry committees focused on cyber security. Cerf sits on the
Board of Directors for the
Endowment for
Excellence in Education, Avanex Corporation and the ClearSight
Systems Corporation. Cerf is a
Fellow of the IEEE, ACM, and
American Association for the Advancement of
Science, the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the
International Engineering Consortium, the
Computer History Museum and the
National Academy of Engineering.
Cerf is a recipient of numerous awards and commendations in connection with his work on the Internet. These include the
Marconi Fellowship,
Charles Stark Draper award of the National Academy of Engineering, the
Prince of Asturias award for science and technology, the
National Medal of Science from
Tunisia, the
Alexander Graham Bell Award presented by the
Alexander Graham Bell Association for the
Deaf, the
NEC Computer and
Communications Prize, the
Silver Medal of the
International Telecommunications Union, the
IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal, the
IEEE Koji Kobayashi Award, the ACM
Software and Systems Award, the ACM
SIGCOMM Award, the Computer and Communications Industries
Association Industry Legend Award, installation in the Inventors
Hall of Fame, the
Yuri Rubinsky Web Award, the
Kilby Award , the
Yankee Group/Interop/
Network World Lifetime Achievement Award, the
George R. Stibitz Award, the
Werner Wolter Award, the
Andrew Saks Engineering Award, the IEEE
Third Millennium Medal, the Computerworld/
Smithsonian Leadership Award, the
J.D. Edwards Leadership Award for
Collaboration,
World Institute on Disability
Annual award and the
Library of Congress Bicentennial
Living Legend medal.
In
December 1994,
People magazine identified Cerf as one of that year's "25 Most Intriguing
People."
In addition to his work on behalf of MCI and the Internet, Cerf has served as a technical advisor to production for the "
Gene Roddenberry's
Earth: Final Conflict" television series and made a special guest appearance on the program in May
1998. Cerf has appeared on television programs NextWave with
Leonard Nimoy and on
World Business Review with
Alexander Haig and
Caspar Weinberger. He is also a distinguished visiting scientist at the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he is working on the design of an interplanetary Internet.
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 doctorate degrees from the
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (
ETH), Zurich;
Lulea University of Technology,
Sweden;
University of the Balearic Islands,
Palma;
Capitol College,
Maryland;
Gettysburg College,
Pennsylvania;
George Mason University,
Virginia;
Rovira i Virgili University,
Tarragona, Spain;
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute,
Troy, New York; the
University of Twente,
Enschede,
The Netherlands;
Brooklyn Polytechnic; and the
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.
His personal interests include fine wine, gourmet cooking and science fiction. Cerf and his wife Sigrid were married in 1966 and have two sons,
David and Bennett.
Vint was seated on the ICANN Board of Directors at the 1999 annual meeting, having been selected by the
Protocol Supporting Organization. He was then selected by the nominating committee for a term on the Board of Directors that ran from June
2003 through the 2004 annual meeting.
At the end of that term, he was selected by the 2004
Nominating Committee to an additional term, which runs from the end of the 2004 annual meeting through the conclusion of the ICANN annual meeting in 2007.
- published: 30 Mar 2007
- views: 6103