Dennis Jennings (Internet pioneer)

[3] In 1984, the National Science Foundation (NSF) began construction of several regional supercomputing centres to provide very high-speed computing resources for the US research community.

In 1985 NSF hired Jennings as its first Program Director for Networking to lead the establishment of the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) to provide access to the five NSF super-computing centres and to enable sharing of resources and information.

Jennings made three critical decisions that shaped the subsequent development of NSFNET:[4] Jennings was also actively involved in the start-up of research networks in Europe (European Academic Research Network, EARN – President; EBONE – board member) and Ireland (HEAnet – initial proposal and later board member).

He chaired the board and general assembly of the Council of European National Top Level Domain Registries (CENTR) from 1999 to early 2001 and was actively involved in the start-up of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

[2] He is an opera and classical music enthusiast and is the chairman of the UCD Choral Scholars board of management.