An Irish internet pioneer has been appointed to the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann).
Dr Dennis Jennings, a venture capitalist and former director of computer services at UCD, is the first Irish person to have been appointed to the board and he will commence his duties in early November, serving for three years.
"I'm delighted to have been considered for the nomination and even more so that, out of the 70 people who were considered for three positions, I was appointed. It is a great honour and I hope my experience and knowledge will serve the board well," Dr Jennings said.
Icann is a non-profit corporation created in 1998 to oversee a number of internet-related tasks previously performed directly on behalf of the US government by other organisations.
The functions of Icann include managing the assignment of domain names and IP addresses. To date, much of its work has concerned the introduction of new generic top-level domains and defining internet policies.
Dr Jennings was responsible for the decisions that created NSFNET, the network that became the backbone of the internet, while working for the US government in 1985.
He has chaired the board and general assembly of the Council for European National Top-Level Domain Registries (CENTR) and was actively involved in the start-up of Icann. Dr Jennings is also the chairman of a number of internet and technology companies in Ireland.
"During my time on the board I would like to try to bring the internet to a wider audience," he said.
"That will mean formulating policies that will allow people, for example, to search Irish domain names using Chinese or Arabic languages and scripts."
