APAN62 Keynote speakers
Our Keynote Speakers bring insight, experience, and perspectives from across the research and education sector.
Klaas Wierenga
Chief Services Officer, GÉANT
Bio
Klaas has been appointed as Chief Services Officer, responsible for GÉANT's Trust & Identity, Security, Cloud, Product Management, Software Development and IT teams.
Klaas has an extensive background in innovation management, with an emphasis on identity, mobility and security.
Before joining GÉANT, Klaas was a senior consulting engineer and identity architect at respectively Cisco Systems' Research and Advanced Development group and Cloud Infrastructure Services group. Before that, Klaas was an innovation manager and manager of Middleware services at SURFnet, the Netherlands NREN. There, Klaas built the first generation of federated identity systems at SURFnet and was the creator of the eduroam service for WiFi roaming in research and education. In 2012 Klaas was the recipient of the first GÉANT (then TERENA) Community Award for creating eduroam. Klaas served as chair of the GÉANT Task Force on Mobility for more than 10 years, as chair of the IETF Abfab working group, as a member of the IETF Security Directorate and as a TNC programme committee member and chair.
Klaas is (co-)author of 'Building the Mobile Internet' (Cisco Press, 2011) and 'Wireless Networking in the Developing World' (2013), as well as three RFCs. He also holds five US patents. In September 2019 Klaas was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in recognition for his invention of eduroam - the global Research and Education WiFi roaming service.
Tuesday 11 August - Opening Ceremony
Talk abstract
Authentication and authorisation in a changing world
The authentication and authorisation services that we all know and love: eduroam and eduGAIN provide an amazing global trust fabric that handles billions of transactions every year. At the same time new use cases emerge for student mobility, cross border scientific collaboration and interconnection between high performance computing facilities. The presentation will focus on how these emerging use cases are being supported.
Matthew Luckie
Consulting Research Scientist, CAIDA
Bio
Matthew Luckie is a Consulting Research Scientist for the Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA), based at the San Diego Supercomputing Centre.
His research interests are primarily in the measurement and analysis of Internet topology, routing, and performance.
Matthew is also the author of scamper, a packet-prober used in the Ark project at CAIDA to collect IP-level Internet topology data.
Tuesday 11 August - Opening Ceremony
Talk Abstract
ROOTBEER -- Routing Tools for R&E Networking
R&E networks provide specialized capacity unavailable through commercial networks, enabling data-intensive scientific collaboration. To support seamless workflows, R&E networks typically prioritize R&E routes over commodity Internet routes — optimal for science but introducing routing infrastructure vulnerabilities for two reasons.
First, prioritizing R&E paths raises the stakes for configuration correctness. Even minor misconfigurations have caused significant route leaks, sending scientific traffic through unintended international routes. Second, academic networks operate under constrained budgets with limited staff, leaving many without routing security best practices recommended for over a decade. New routing innovations (RPKI, ASPA) can also introduce unforeseen complications, further discouraging adoption.
To address these issues, Internet2 and CAIDA are building a routing observatory and operational support system to ensure routing policies align with science ecosystem goals. APAN's role as a key connector of R&E networks across the Asia-Pacific region makes it a natural beneficiary of these tools, and the operational expertise and regional routing data of its members would make valuable contributions to the project's global reach and effectiveness. In this talk, we will demonstrate what we have built so far and invite collaboration.
nicole ferguson
VP – New Zealand Finance & Operations, OpenStar Technologies
Bio
Nicole is VP Finance and Operations at OpenStar Technologies, a Wellington based fusion energy company developing levitated dipole reactors – a compact and capital efficient approach to commercial fusion power. Her remit spans finance, operations, IT and commercial strategy. Prior to OpenStar, Nicole was CFO and then CEO of REANNZ, New Zealands National Research and Education Network.
She has also served as CFO and CEO at engineering & manufacturing companies, with a career long thread of taking finance-first roles in complex, mission driven organisations and using them to reshape how those organisations operate & succeed. As someone who has sat on both sides of the research network, both as its champion and within the deep-tech commercialization which it enables, she brings a different vantage point to APAN62.
Friday 14 August - Closing Ceremony
Talk Abstract
A uniquely APAC approach to fusion
OpenStar is developing the levitated dipole, a unique fusion concept originally conceived of by the father of key fibre optic technologies, Prof Akira Hasegawa. This fusion concept combined with specialist high-temperature superconducting technologies and engineering developed right here in New Zealand has brought the levitated dipole approach to life and is on its way to disrupting the way we generate electricity.
Join Nicole to hear about the concept’s origins, how it came to be that NZ became the home of the levitated dipole, the global partners we work with to make this feat possible and our plans for the future.