This year, DFN Association celebrates 40 years of supporting science and education.
Founded in 1984 as a central joint scientific institution, the DFN Association was initially responsible for the sustainable operation and expansion of a German Research and Education Network and its services. Today, DFN operates and develops the communication infrastructure to Germany’s broader scientific community, linking institutions in higher education and science across 850 locations all over Germany. Its X-WiN network provides the technical backbone, totaling 10,250 km of optical fibre and a multi-terabit IP platform between 65 core nodes. More than 1,3 exabyte of data exchanged over it every year makes it one of the largest R&E network in the world, putting DFN at the centre of much of Europe’s R&E data movements.
To celebrate the anniversary, an event was held in June this year at the European School of Management and Technology Berlin (ESMT Berlin) with an opening speech by Prof. Dr.-Ing Stefan Wesner, Chairman of the Board of the DFN Association and Director of the IT Center University of Cologne, followed by a tour of the neighbouring Humboldt Forum where guests viewed the ethnological collections and enjoyed rooftop views of the surrounding Berlin skyline. The day continued with a drinks and food reception, after which guests settled in the Tower View conference room for the keynote speech from former DFN Chairman Professor Dr. Hans-Joachim Bungartz.
In his speech, Prof. Bungartz described the DFN Association as a ‘blueprint for “self-help in science” in the German scientific landscape’. He went on to discuss the highlights, successes and challenges of the past 40 years including the founding period, the first independent scientific network and milestone step from a funded project to the economic autonomy of an organisation supported by science. DFN’s interactive timeline of its events is available on its website here.
For the latest issue of our CONNECT Magazine (CONNECT 47), we spoke with Christian Grimm, CEO of DFN to understand more about DFN’s plans and the evolving European scientific landscape. Christian served on the GÉANT Board of Directors, including as Chair of the GÉANT Board from 2015 to 2020, and in 2024 received the Vietsch Medal of Honour at TNC24.
Christian, looking back over DFN’s history, what makes you most proud?
First of all, it’s worth noting that I joined DFN in 2009 right after its 25th anniversary. So, there is a whole generation before me that brought DFN up to speed and I’ll never underestimate what they have achieved. For our 40th anniversary, we asked our community to share thoughts and memories about DFN. The quotes we received illustrate the strong ties we have established – to our members and between individuals. To receive such confirmation that we make a relevant contribution to supporting scientists and how much that is appreciated makes me humble and also a little proud, of course.
How has DFN’s user community and their needs changed over that time?
In the early days it was all about connectivity, a matter of few visionary experts. Every newly connected site got celebrated and much of the discussion centred on network technologies and architectures. Today, connectivity is considered a basic supply, much like water and electricity, to all scientific disciplines. As long as our network is performant, cost efficient, resilient and secure there is little concern about how we achieve this. Of course, discussions now extend to the many services we now provide over the network. The most relevant change probably is that together with our member organisations we now operate a huge environment across Germany: the use of interconnected systems across our networks has become the natural basis every scientist and student uses as part of their daily work.
You served on the GÉANT Board for many years, what do you see as the biggest change in the GÉANT community over the past 10 years?
First, your question gives me the opportunity to convey my congratulations to GÉANT’s 10th anniversary! Are we aware that GÉANT is a comparably young organisation? Maybe not, and to me that’s a good indication that the merger of DANTE and TERENA into the GÉANT Association has gone quite smoothly and is well supported by all its members.
When you ask IT folks about changes over a decade there’s certainly a lot to tell. However, I don’t think the main changes are IT related – it’s the environment that changes and with that the nature of NRENs. We have seen many national and European initiatives coming. Due to their different nature some NRENs are quite active in new areas, others less so. On one hand this opens the space for new joint initiatives, on the other hand it challenges us to keep a close eye on what remains as common ground.
What do you see as DFN’s most important objective over the next five (or ten if you prefer) years?
We serve our member organisations primarily through their IT service centres. To me, these centres are in an increasingly difficult situation: more is expected of them while at the same time their options to actually do more remain restricted. This opens the need for more cooperation, but also the question about the demarcation lines between us and our members. For example, currently we expect the first level support for most of our services within the respective organisations. We certainly won’t be able to take over the first level support in the future, but collaborative models and the use of AI can lead us to new approaches. And this will happen soon.
Where do you see research and innovation in 10 years’ time? Do you think that national and EU level public funding will be sufficient to compete globally?
In Europe, we have recently seen how quickly priorities had to be adjusted at national and EU level. This makes it difficult today to talk about sustainable and adequate funding for science, research and innovation. However, I do not believe that more funding always leads to better science. But there is no doubt that we need to agree more on priorities in order to remain competitive. I see this also a challenge to us. Maybe not everything we have done over the last decade was successful or at the end relevant.
What does the GÉANT community need to do to continue to be relevant on a global scale?
Saving the best for the last, this is indeed a tough question. Our current strong position cannot be taken for granted and there will be various challenges to maintaining it, and each will require specific measures. And certainly, remaining united is a key element here. In my time as chair, I found a high-level perspective that helped me as a guiding principle in some difficult situations: keep European NRENs (and not just EU-27 or any other subgroup) as close as possible together and ensure we support each other in the best possible way to make us better together.
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