The GÉANT Community Award has been awarded to three winners this year: Davina Luyten, Christian Panigl, and Lonneke Walk.
Davina Luyten, Belnet
“I am truly honoured and overwhelmed to receive the GÉANT Community Award. It is a privilege to be part of a community where trust and collaboration are at the core, and which is fully dedicated to serving the research and education sector. I find great fulfilment in working alongside a team of committed colleagues from across Europe, and I would like to dedicate this award to them as well. It truly is teamwork at its best, and I am very proud of the results we have achieved so far. This award encourages us to continue our efforts, and I look forward to what lies ahead!”
About Davina
Davina Luyten joined Belnet, the Belgian NREN, in 2014. With a background in multilingual communication and journalism, she has developed broad expertise in external communications, public relations, and crisis communication. Since 2020, she has been actively involved in the GÉANT project, where she coordinates the Awareness subtask within WP8 (Security). Together with her team, she plays a key role in developing and expanding initiatives that raise awareness of the human factor in cybersecurity through training sessions, workshops, and an annual awareness campaign for the GÉANT community.
Driven by her passion for crisis communication, Davina actively contributes to crisis preparedness initiatives for the GÉANT community such as CLAW and TALON. In addition, she is an engaged member of the SIGMarcomms group.
Looking ahead, she is keen to further develop new initiatives that strengthen the resilience of both the GÉANT and Belnet communities, with a strong focus on responding to the evolving needs of their members in today’s cyber landscape.
Christian Panigl, ACOnet
“I was completely surprised by this award. I am all the more delighted that my 40 years of work in the context of ACOnet and the wider Internet community, in a wide variety of roles, have received this great recognition. I am a true community enthusiast and greatly value the excellent collaboration within the international scientific network community. My biggest challenge in the GÉANT context was organising TNC17 in Linz, both as host and programme committee chair, which, thanks to the fantastic support of my team, our participants in Linz, and many incredibly dedicated colleagues from GÉANT, NORDUnet, and PCSS, was a resounding success. I am very grateful to have been able to spend my entire exciting professional life in such a collaborative environment.”
About Christian
Christian Panigl has been involved in the development and operation of the Austrian research network ACOnet since 1986, starting at the University of Technology in Vienna, in the context of RARE and COSINE (Cooperation for Open Systems Interconnection in Europe). In 1992 the whole ACOnet team and their responsibilities moved to the University of Vienna, joining forces with other international networking activities.
Christian was then part of the Ebone operations team and, for some years, co-chair of the RIPE Routing Working Group. He was in charge of the Vienna Internet eXchange since its creation in 1996 and was also founding member of the executive board of the Euro-IX.net association from 2001 to 2008.
He is formally leading the division ACOnet & Vienna Internet eXchange at the University of Vienna since 2008. He has been the Austrian delegate to the GÉANT General Assembly since 2010. He was elected member of the board of Internet Service Providers Austria from 2013 to 2024.
Lonneke Walk, SURF
“Receiving the GÉANT Community Award is a big surprise and truly overwhelming. I’m so proud, especially because this award shows the appreciation for communications and the work SIG-Marcomms is doing in promoting the fantastic and important work we do as NRENs. I feel privileged to be able to share knowledge, inspire and learn from other marcomms professionals how to promote our digital solutions to help researchers solve society’s greatest challenges and showing how we enhance education by improving educational services. Not only for our own countries, but also how we connect globally to advance research and education.”
About Lonneke
Lonneke Walk joined SURF in 2005 as a communication advisor. She led several initiatives, including the development of SURF’s security awareness campaign ‘Cyber Save Yourself’, created in close collaboration with member institutions. In 2009, she became Team Lead for Corporate Communications and as of 1 January 2026 she serves as Team Lead for Communications & Marketing. In this role she is responsible for PR and communications and the positioning of SURF and its services.
Lonneke is also a member of SURF’s Strategic Portfolio Committee, where she monitors the progress of ongoing service developments and ensures alignment between services, SURF’s strategy, and member-focused product propositions.
She has been active in the GÉANT community for over 20 years, by joining through SIG-Marcomms. After participating for several years, she served as Chair and Steering Committee member from 2015 to 2025. Within SIG-Marcomms, she collaborates with fellow marcomms professionals by sharing experiences and initiatives to raise awareness of how researchers, educators, projects, institutions, and society as a whole benefit from the work of NRENs. This collaboration not only provides inspiration for national NRENs but also supports joint communication efforts that highlight the global impact of NRENs.
Through SIG-Marcomms, she also collaborated with other SIGs and Task Forces in joint meetings to promote collaboration between fields and highlight how working areas are intertwined; and to make the more technical colleagues within NRENs understand that marketing and communications can help to translate technical language into user stories available for everyone, and increase the visibility of the positive impact NRENs have.
