TNC18 keynote speakers line-up

In less than two weeks GÉANT flagship event will open its doors to welcome delegates from all corners of the globe and enable them to discuss, learn, connect and forge future collaborations. TNC18 plenaries, demonstrations and presentations will cover an exciting variety of topics and themes to engage and stimulate the TNC audience always eager to learn.
This year’s prestigious keynote speakers, with their unique backgrounds and areas of expertise, crown the eclectic conference programme. To give you a flavour of TNC18 here’s a quick overview of this year’s keynote presentations.

Opening Plenary – Monday 11 June 2018 – 11.00

MARIE MOE, Research Scientist at SINTEF ICT and Associate Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
Embodied vulnerabilities – Why I am hacking my own heart

Marie Moe is a security researcher living with a vulnerable medical implant, a network connected pacemaker that generates every single beat of her heart. She started a hacking project investigating the cyber security of her personal critical infrastructure, and tells her story to create awareness and to inspire others to do more research on the security of connected medical implants.

Tuesday Plenary Key Note 1 – 12 June 2018 – 11.00 – 12.30

Extreme networks, building a high speed fibre network in the Arctic and Eastern and Southern Africa

HELGE STRANDEN, Senior Advisor on ICT and HPC physical infrastructure, Uninett, Norway.
Deploying an optic research network in arctic environments
Uninett is at the forefront at global level in the deployment and management of optical networks for research purposes in arctic environments. Extreme arctic temperatures, as well as icebergs, permafrost, whales, polar bears combined with complex logistics, are all very challenging factors in these environments. This keynote presentation features photos and live video footage from Uninett’s optic subsea cable project, where 2×270 kilometres of optic cable was laid on the seabed outside Svalbard, an arctic archipelago located between mainland Norway and the North Pole.

MEOLI KASHORDA, Executive Director of Kenya Education Network (KENET) and Professor of Information Systems at United States International University – Africa (USIU), Kenya.
Building National Research and Education Networks in Eastern and Southern Africa
The case of KENET in Kenya Sub-Saharan Africa represents a very large land mass equivalent to China, US and India with limited penetration of broadband networks. Although the first undersea fibre cable only landed in the Eastern Africa coast region in 2009, emerging African NRENs in Eastern and Africa have been able to build networks to connect universities and research institutes to the global research and education network. This presentation describes the specific example of KENET in Kenya and how it has been able to overcome the obstacles of lack of adequate road/electricity infrastructures, limited penetration of fibre networks and low network engineering skills to build a high-speed network.

Tuesday Plenary Key Note 2 – 12 June 2018 – 11.00 – 12.30

ALEXANDRA BECH GJØRV, President and CEO of SINTEF, Norway.
The impact of Digital Transformation for Research Institutes
Alexandra’s presentation will focus on how the digital transformation impacts a research organisation like Sintef (one of the largest in Europe), both in ICT and the everyday research of all its scientists and researchers. What are the needs that NRENs, and other support infrastructures, will need to meet in years to come? What has already changed?

Closing Plenary – 13 June 2018 – 16.00

ANDREW WOODS, Senior Research fellow at Curtin University, Western Australia.
The Sydney-Kormoran Project: Visualising History using Advanced Methods
The Sydney-Kormoran Project is multi-disciplinary, combining deep-water imaging, supercomputing, image processing, advanced visualisation and history to tell the story of two of Australia’s most significant shipwrecks – the HMAS Sydney (II) and HSK Kormoran. After a short but fierce battle in the midst of World War II, Sydney and Kormoran met their fate at the bottom of the Indian Ocean on 19 November 1941. The project teams are now processing 500,000 images of the wrecks to generate detailed digital 3D models from the wreck site.