NLR Management
Glenn Ricart, President and CEO
Dr. Glenn Ricart joined National LambdaRail (NLR), the coast-to-coast, high-performance network owned by the U.S. research and education community, as president and CEO in October 2009 after a series of technology and business leadership positions in higher education, research, private industry and government service.
Among Ricart's pioneering Internet accomplishments are managing the first implementation of the Internet protocols for the IBM PC, constructing the first NSFnet regional network, and operating the first Internet interconnection point (the FIX) for the U.S. federal government.
He also served as Novell's chief technology officer under three CEOs including Eric Schmidt who is now CEO of Google.
Ricart comes to NLR from PricewaterhouseCoopers' (PwC) Center for Advanced Research (CAR). As Managing Director, he oversaw all research activities and related budgets for CAR. And as Technology and Development Leader for CAR's Aura project, he directed the visioning and software execution of an electronic performance support system for PwC's global audit practice, the flagship initiative of the firm's Audit Transformation Project which is now being rolled-out globally.
Other experience includes: founder of three technology start-up's; program manager at DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; the military's technology liaison to the Clinton White House; chief computing officer (academic CIO) for the University of Maryland College Park; and co-founder and managing principal investigator of SURAnet, the first internet service provider to provide commercial connections. He currently serves on the board of the Public Interest Registry, the registry for Internet names ending in .org.
Ricart received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Case Western Reserve University and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland College Park.
Gwendolyn (Wendy) Huntoon, Chief Technology Officer
Wendy Huntoon is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for NLR, with responsibility for setting overall technology strategy for the organization. She is also the Vice Chair of NLR's Board of Directors.
In her role as CTO, Huntoon oversees NLR's Engineering and Operations function, which includes a distributed Network Operations Center (NOC) for Layer 1, 2 and 3 services, and NLR Engineering and Field Services. Also reporting to Huntoon is NLR's Experiments Support Services team, which provides end-to-end support for the research community's use of NLR.
Huntoon concurrently serves as Director of Networking at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) where she directs the networking resource group, which carries out advanced research and provides consulting and training to universities and research centers nationwide. Her responsibilities also include the management and direction of the Pittsburgh Gigapop, a high-speed network aggregation point that provides advanced network services to Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Huntoon holds a B.A. in Math and History from Bowdoin College and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Northeastern University.
Kurt A. Snodgrass, Chief Administrative and Financial Officer
Kurt Snodgrass is the Chief Administrative and Financial Officer for National LambdaRail (NLR). In this capacity he oversees all administrative and financial functions for NLR, including business development, human resources, member relations, accounting, contracts, marketing and communications.
Prior to joining NLR in May 2010, Snodgrass served as Vice Chancellor for Information Technology and Telecommunications for the Ohio Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education. He was responsible for operations and budgets of the agency's Information Technology divisions at the State Regents as well as the Oklahoma Guaranteed Student Loan Program. In addition, he served as Chief Operating Officer for OneNet, Oklahoma's official telecommunications network for education and government.
From 2004 to 2010 Snodgrass was Oklahoma's representative on the NLR Board of Directors and from 2005 until 2009 he served on Sprint's Higher Education Advisory Board.
Snodgrass holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Oklahoma as well as a Master of Science Degree from Oklahoma State University – emphasizing curriculum development and information communication technologies.
Grover Browning, Director of Engineering and Operations
Grover Browning, Director of Engineering and Operations for National LambdaRail (NLR), has extensive experience designing and deploying next-generation networks.
In his current role he oversees all technical operations for NLR under a contract with Indiana University (IU), where Browning concurrently serves as Manager, National Optical Infrastructures. Browning's responsibilities include managing NLR's distributed Network Operations Center (NOC) Services, including the Service Desk, Layer 1 NOC, Layer 2/3 NOC, NLR Engineering and Field Services; planning and managing the NLR infrastructure; managing NLR's technical and operational relationships as well as overall planning and design for evolving the NLR infrastructure.
In the over three years Browning has worked with NLR, he was instrumental is setting up NLR's Layer 2 (FrameNet) and Layer 3 (PacketNet) networks, and has deployed over 12,000 miles of optical networking equipment encompassing 250 locations, 31 add/drops locations, and $100M in equipment. This includes the dark build of the NLR Phase2/southern footprint and the replacement of the lit NLR Phase1/Northern footprint on a particularly aggressive schedule with minimal customer impact.
Before NLR, Browning's experience included designing and deploying the Indiana state optical network, iLight. He also deployed the first-generation Internet2 Abilene routers as well as designed and deployed the second-generation Internet2 Abilene routed network.
Browning has a B.A. in Computer Science and Philosophy from Indiana University.