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GARR awarded for technological innovation

Pubblicato il 17 June 2019

Tallinn, 17 June 2019 - Today, during a plenary session at TNC2019, Claudio Allocchio, senior technical officer for advanced applications and security areas at GARR, was awarded the medal of honour of the Vietsch Foundation.

The Vietsch Foundation medal is awarded annually to individuals that have developed new ideas or demonstrated sustained organisational skills and whose efforts have led to the creation of institutions or services of enduring value.

The Trustees of the Vietsch Foundation take great pleasure in announcing that they have unanimously chosen Claudio Allocchio for the demonstrated achievements and long-lasting benefit he contributed to the research and education networking community throughout his career.

Valentino Cavalli, representing the Board of Trustees explains that the Vietsch Foundation has decided to award this year’s medal to Claudio because “his contribution to research and education networking has been impressive and as a senior manager of GARR he has contributed enormously to developing communities internationally”. He adds that “it’s been a pleasure to work many years with Claudio, when he was member of the board and chair of the Technical Committee of TERENA and to witness the competence and enthusiasm he’d lately put into supporting the LOw LAtency audio visual streaming system (LoLa) and reaching out to new communities in the Arts and Humanities.”

Claudio recapped his achievements with a statement capturing both his vision and the pleasure he takes in addressing challenging objectives: “since my early days in networking I always tried to use the network to allow people to communicate easier and better and to create groups. Anyone should be able to talk and send messages to anyone, I said at a time when this was just a dream, and with a bunch of colleagues we created the global e-mail service. So, when some years later I met the apparently impossible dream of LoLa – to make distances disappear with the click of a mouse – I took yet another adventure, helping to make it true. I strongly believe in collaboration, which is the fundamental engine which moves the research and education community where we are all peers: creating community spirit, by any means, including technology, is the way to create innovation, progress and… it’s a lot of fun! … and a lot of work!”

Claudio Allocchio

Claudio Allocchio was born in 1959 in Crema, Italy where he attended high school. He had a clear interest in science, and technology, which in those years led him to coordinate a team of students who successfully built and launched a series of rockets. He then moved to Trieste, where he studied astrophysics and particle physics.

In 1984 he won a study grant at CERN to apply astronomy image processing techniques to particle physics detectors track reconstruction, and then was confirmed as research fellow.

At that time, he approached computer networking issues, creating the world first multiprotocol mail gateway service for universal messaging: “by pure coincidence” the user interface to access the global service was named GMAIL. He also started there to collaborate in creating network services in the High-Energy Physics community, and setup the first international link between CERN and Italy. In 1988 he moved back to Trieste, as network manager in the newly created Elettra Synchrotron Radiation facility, and joined the Gruppo Armonizzazione per le Reti della Ricerca (GARR) who later became the Italian NREN, and engaged in RARE WG1 mail and messaging, coordinating and later chairing the COSINE S2.2 proposal for a global messaging service. In 1991, Claudio was one of the RARE WG1 members who joined the IETF to standardize mail messaging systems, and since then was involved in the IETF Application Area, writing, editing and revising a significant number of RFCs. He also chaired some working groups, including the IETF-fax one, and took active part in all activities which involved messaging and real time communications.

He was later called into the Application Area Directorate, and chaired it before the creation of the joint Applications and Real Time (ART) new area. Starting in 1993 he was also involved in the creation of the “it” ccTLD domain Registry, and served as President of the Italian Naming Authority from 1995 to 2005 and advisor to Ministry of Communication domain names committee; he is now a member of the ccTLD Registry Advisory Board. Claudio has worked in various roles in all GÉANT projects (including as Security Coordinator and as member of activities in the areas of multimedia, security, policy); he is currently also one of the main advisors for the EaPConnect project. He also was TERENA vice-president for technical programme from 2001 until 2007 and member of the board.

In 2005 he started to work in the collaboration with Conservatorio Tartini in Trieste, where he is currently chief network engineer for LoLa development. Besides his education in Physics, he also has a formal education in music (piano).

Vietsch Foundation

The mission of the Vietsch Foundation is to promote research and development of advanced Internet technology for scientific research and higher education. The Vietsch Foundation fulfils its goals in two ways: First, it contributes funding to specific research and development projects that demonstrate potential value to progress European and global research and education networking. And second, each year it awards a medal of honour to people who have contributed to the development of services or technologies of lasting value that are used by the networking community and its users in research, development and education. The Foundation was created through the last will and testament of Willem Karel Vietsch (1952–2014), a Dutch expert, a leader of the international Internet community, and also the Secretary-General of TERENA, a former association of European national research and education networks. For details visit: http://www.vietsch-foundation.org

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