The Network for Advanced Research and Innovation

National LambdaRail Names New CEO: Glenn Ricart

Internet, business veteran to lead research and education network

Cypress, CA, October 5, 2009 -- National LambdaRail (NLR), the coast-to-coast, high-performance network owned by the research and education community, announces the appointment of Dr. Glenn Ricart as its new president and CEO. Ricart brings to NLR a distinguished background in networking and Internet leadership that spans higher education, research, private industry and government service.

"With his diversity of experience and talents, Dr. Ricart is well positioned to take NLR forward from the strong foundation laid over the past six years by NLR's first CEO, Tom West, and to help NLR take full advantage of the many, new and diverse opportunities before us," stated Kurt Snodgrass, NLR Chairman of the Board and Vice Chancellor for Information Technology and Telecommunications for the Oklahoma State Regents. The CEO transition will be fully effective as of November.

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.

###

About National LambdaRail (NLR)
Owned by the U.S. research and education community and dedicated to serving the needs of researchers and research groups, NLR is the innovation platform for a wide range of academic disciplines and public-private partnerships. NLR's coast-to-coast, high-performance network infrastructure offers unrestricted usage and bandwidth, a choice of cutting-edge network services and applications, and customized service for individual researchers and projects. For more information, please visit www.nlr.net.

Media Contact
Kristina Scott, NLR, 1-650-678-9034, kscott@nlr.net