LOUIS POUZIN, Open-Root, FR

Louis Pouzin was born in1931 in France. He invented the and he is known as one of ’s father. He graduated from École Polytechnique in Paris. Louis POUZIN has acquired an international reputation as an expert in computer communications and network techniques. Most of his career has been devoted to the design and implementation of computer systems, such as CTSS the first large time sharing system at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), or the CYCLADES computer network and its datagram based network. His work was used by Robert Kahn, Vinton Cerf, and others in the development of TCP/IP protocols in the Internet. Besides his capacity in leading teams of top professionals, he is known internationally for his participation in early network standardization activities within IFIP, ISO and CCITT (now ITU-T), and his numerous publications, many of them have become educational material in network courses. As a lecturer, he is especially appreciated for presenting complex subjects in clear and understandable terms.

He has published more than 80 articles and a book on computer networks and received a lot of awards. Among them he received: IFIP Silver Core, ACM SIGCOMM, IEEE Internet, ISOC Hall of Fame, and Chevalier of Légion d’Honneur. Pouzin was one of five Internet and Web pioneers awarded with the 1st Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering (QEPrize). On 25th June, 2013, he received his award from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.

In 2012, he founded with Chantal Lebrument an alternative root company called Open-Root, offering a new model for the management of top level domain names.