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Nominating Committee | Members 2009

This page contains some background biographical information about each Nominating Committee member.

Members of the Committee

Tricia Drakes (Chair), Alan Levin (Associate Chair), Hagen Hultzsch (Advisor to Chair), Klaus Birkenbihl, Margarita Valdes Cortes, Ute Decker, Matias Altamira Gigena, Hartmut Glaser, Caroline Greer, Jan Gruntorad, Rob Hall, Ole Jacobsen, Rodney Joffe, Norbert Klein, Khaled Koubaa, Phil Lodico, Bill Manning, Desiree Miloshevic, Ross Rader, Greg Ruth, Liz Williams, Hong Xue

Klaus Birkenbihl

Klaus Birkenbihl is CEO of his company ict Media GmbH and coordinator of W3C's international Offices program. Klaus holds a degree in Mathematics from the University of Bonn and started his career at the GMD National Research Lab for Information Technology. Later he was with the Institute for Media Communication of Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. Klaus was a teacher for Computer Science at the University of Cologne and the University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg.

Klaus started his activities in computer networking in 1983 when he was manager of GMD's Computing Center in Bonn and joined the European Academic Research Network (EARN, 1983) as a founding member. He acted as Deputy Director of EARN Germany (1987-1990), and was a member of the Member of the EASInet steering committee. Klaus was Treasurer and Chairman of the German Chapter of the Internet Society where he is still on the supervisory board. He launched the W3C Germany Office in 1997 and was on W3C's advisory board 2002-2005.

After Klaus left Fraunhofer in 2005 he launched his own company and started to work for the W3C team.

Margarita Valdes Cortes

Margarita is currently the Legal and Business Manager of NIC Chile, in charge of designing the administrative and commercial policies as well as the administration of the local domain name dispute resolution system. Along with her participation in the steering group of NIC Chile and in the Chilean National Council for Domain Names and IP Numbers, Margarita provides legal assistance in intellectual property, industrial property and cybercrime to different governmental organizations, such as the Chilean Civil Police, Ministries and Official Departments. She is also a member of the Nom Com of ICANN, representing the ccNSO.

She is former President of LACTLD (Latin American and Caribbean Top Level Domains Organization) and participates as a permanent representative of NIC Chile before ICANN. Margarita is a frequently invited professor for graduate courses, in diploma and master programs at the University of Chile, the Catholic University of Chile and other universities. Before joining NIC Chile, she worked at the legal division of the Chilean Author Rights Society and previously in Webhost S.A., a pioneer Internet Service Provider in Chile, as legal and intellectual property advisor on matters of the Internet, domain name registration, consumer protection, and illicit actions in the online environment.

Ute Decker

Ute Decker studied law in Germany and the UK, graduated from Mainz University, Germany in 1994, passed the German legal bar in 1996, and qualified to practice in England/Wales in 2001.  After three years in academia working for the Institute for Information, Telecommunication and Media Law in Muenster, Germany, she took up a position with the international trade association representing the music industry worldwide (IFPI) based in London from 1999, interfacing with policy makers and international organisations and specialising in copyright, trademarks and domain name issues, enforcement policy and international private law.  She represented IFPI in the IPC and was first elected to the GNSO Council in 2005 and is currently serving her second term.  Ute recently joined Microsoft as Director for Interoperability and Standards (EMEA), still based in London.

Tricia Drakes – 2009 Nom Com Chair

Jan Gruntorád

Jan Gruntor ád holds Dipl. Ing. (1975) and Ph.D. (1989) degrees from Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague.

In 1992, he was awarded a grant by the Ministry of Education for establishment of an Internet network in the Czech Republic - CESNET. Legal body CESNET - NREN of the Czech Republic was founded in March 1996 and CESNET is an association of all Czech Universities and Czech Academy of Sciences.

Since creation of CESNET, Dr. Gruntorad is a member of the Board of Directors of CESNET and Chief Executive Officer responsible for both research and operational tasks within CESNET.

In the period of 1998 to 2003, he was the chairman of the CEENET (Central and Eastern European Network Association). From 1996 to 1999 he served in the Board of Directors of the EBONE Company (pan-European Internet provider with the main office in Copenhagen, Denmark). In January 2003, Dr. Gruntorad became a member of the Board of Directors in DANTE (Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe). Dr. Gruntorad represents the Czech Republic in the TERENA Association (Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association) and is also a member of the Executive Committee of the GN2 project.

For more than five years, he worked as consultant for NATO in the field of computer network for Research and Educational community in area of the Caucasus.

Robert Hall

CEO, Momentous.ca

Mr. Hall has a long history with ICANN. Beginning with his participation on the International Forum on the White Paper, which led to the founding of ICANN in 1998, to his term as vice chair of the Registrars’ Constituency, ended in 2008, he has been a vocal advocate for the Internet as a commerce platform.

In fact, Mr. Hall founded the Ottawa, Canada-based Momentous.ca in 1994 to support business and consumer acquisition, deployment and management of Internet domain names. Today, Momentous is a holding company of several Internet and consumer companies with over US $30 million in annual revenues.

The roster of companies includes:

  • Namescout.com , an accredited ICANN and AUDA (.au) registrar;
  • Internic.ca and DomainsAtCost.ca, each an accredited CIRA (.ca) registrar;
  • Rebel.com , leading the next generation of domain registrars by offering tools and services to more easily manage domain portfolio;
  • Pool.com , a pioneer in the use of auctions to help set market value for internet domain names; and
  • Zip.ca , Canada's leading online video rental service.

Together these companies have over 1,000,000 individual and corporate customers.

The 42-year-old is a recognized Internet industry expert who has spoken many times before organizations such as WIPO, ICANN, the US and Canadian Governments and various International police and justice organizations.

In 1998, Mr. Hall sat on the Canadian Governments "E-commerce and domain name taskforce" which produced the report on domain names that was presented at the 1998 OECD meetings in Ottawa. That same year, Mr. Hall was the founding Chairman of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), the registry for the .ca domain.

Prior to creating Momentous, Mr. Hall was CEO and founder of Internet Access Inc., the Ottawa-based ISP that quickly grew to be one of the largest in the region, capturing over 40 percent of the Ottawa market. In 1996, Internet Access Inc. merged with Hookup Communications and began trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Mr. Hall was one of the principal founders of the Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP), the association that represents all ISP's in Canada. He held the position of Vice-Chair of CAIP for its first 4 years. Mr. Hall also hosted a radio show called “Surfing the Net” in 1995 and wrote a weekly column on the Internet for the Sun Publishing chain of newspapers for several years more.

A resident of Canada’s National Capital Region, he attended the University of Ottawa for Computer Science from 1984 to 1988.

Matias Altamira Gigena

Matías Altamira got its Law Degree at the National University of Córdoba, Republic of Argentina, and its LL.M Degree at Temple University, Philadelphia, United States of America. Moreover, he attended the Small Business Management Certificate Program at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

While in the US he was a member of the Consumer Bankruptcy Assistance Project and participated in the draft of a training manual on E-commerce Law for developing countries requested by UNCTAD. Back in Argentina, he was retained as the contracts representative by Lockheed Martin Argentina and as the proxy representative of Lockheed Martin Corporation in its Latin-American investment.

He is a columnist on Internet, E-commerce and International Law for Commerce & Justice newspaper, member of the Foreign Trade Advisory Board of the Factor magazine and contributor to several national and international electronic and printed publications. He has given several lectures on international forums regarding the legal aspects of Internet, he was the Chair of the Mercosur Internet Law Congress that took place in August 2006, in Cordoba, Argentina. He has been appointed as Iberoamerican Information Society Research Institute (IIISI) Representative www.ibero-americano.org before ICANN and LACRALO. Currently, he is a partner of Altamira Gigena – Law Firm www.altamiragigena.com.ar.

Hartmut Richard Glaser

Hartmut Richard Glaser is Assistant Professor at the Escola Politécnica (Engineering Faculty) of the University of São Paulo since 1968.

He is Executive Coordinator of the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br) since 1996 and Director of the Brazilian Internet Network Center (NIC.br) since 2005. He also serves as Director (Treasurer) of LACNIC and AC/ASO Member for the LACNIC Region.

Hartmut serves a voting member of the Nominating Committee, selected by the Council of the Address Supporting Organization.

Caroline Greer

Caroline Greer is Director of Policy and Industry Relations at mTLD Ltd [dotMobi]. Caroline has been with the dotMobi Registry since the establishment of its Headquarter Office in Dublin, Ireland in November 2005. Caroline is responsible for all policy related issues, dotMobi ’ s supporting organizations and the .mobi premium names portfolio.

Previously, Caroline spent three years working for ComReg, the Irish Telecommunications Regulator. She was involved in negotiations at European level on the EU Telecoms Regulatory Framework of 2003 and worked on its subsequent transposition into national law and implementation at the regulatory level. Caroline was seconded to the Irish Government during Ireland ’ s EU Presidency of 2004 to work on the EU Telecoms Council Working Group and Presidency events. On conclusion of the Presidency, Caroline remained there to manage several national broadband projects, including the roll out of broadband to all Irish schools.

Caroline holds a LLB (Hons) in Law and Spanish from Queens University, Belfast, an MBA from the University of Ulster and a Post Grad Dip. in EU Competition Law from Kings College, London.

Caroline is a voting member of the Nominating Committee, selected by the Registry Constituency.

Hagen Hultzsch – Advisor to Chair

Hagen Hultzsch has more than 40 years of experience in technology management. Until he stepped down in 2001, Dr. Hultzsch was a member of the Management Board of Deutsche Telekom, where he was responsible for research and development, information technology, and quality. During Dr. Hultzsch's tenure, Deutsche Telekom evolved from a government-owned organization into a publicly-owned corporation with four separate business units. Prior to his work with Deutsche Telekom, Dr. Hultzsch held various executive positions at Volkswagen AG, Electronic Data Systems (EDS), and GSI, a German research organization. Until the end of 2001, Dr. Hultzsch served as Chair of the Supervisory Board of T-Venture Holding in Bonn, Germany, a corporate venture capital firm focused on high-technology investments in telecom software, wireless communications equipment, computer software, and Internet infrastructure.

Dr. Hultzsch was a founder of EARN, the European Academic and Research Network, for which he also served as a member of the Board of Directors. He also served as an Assistant Professor at Mainz University and completed a fellowship at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center. He currently serves as a board member for some 20 commercial and academic organizations in the United States and Europe.

Hagen Hultzsch was selected for the ICANN Board by the Nominating Committee. His term started after the 2004 annual meeting and ended after the conclusion of ICANN's annual meeting in 2006. The ICANN Board has appointed Hagen to be the Chair of the 2008 ICANN Nominating Committee.

Ole Jacobsen

Ole J. Jacobsen is the Editor and Publisher of The Internet Protocol Journal (IPJ), < http://cisco.com/ipj > a quarterly technical publication for Internet and Intranet Professionals published by Cisco Systems since 1998.

Ole has been active in the computer networking field since 1976 when he went to work for the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, an early ARPANET site. Ole was with Interop Company (now part of CMP Media) since shortly after its formation in 1987 until 1998. He was the Editor and Publisher of ConneXions--The Interoperability Report, a monthly technical journal in the field of computer-communications, published by Interop Company.

Jacobsen holds a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and Computing Science from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England.

He serves on the board of the Asia Pacific Internet Association (APIA) (http://www.apia.org), which hosts the annual APRICOT conference (http://www.apricot.net).

Ole is a member of the IETF Administrative Oversight Committee (IAOC), see http://iaoc.ietf.org/

Ole organizes pipe organ demonstrations and concerts (http://www.organdemo.info) at technical meetings such as the IETF, RIPE, CEEnet, APNIC, --- and hopefully some day at an ICANN meeting.

He is a member of:

Ole can be reached at ole@cisco.com and is the IETF appointee to the 2009 Nom Com.

Rodney Joffe

Rodney Joffe is Senior Vice President and Senior Technologist of NeuStar Inc (NYSE:NSR). His operational responsibilities include defining and guiding the development of technical initiatives within the company, spearheading its Innovation process, and representing the company within the standards bodies and working groups of the ietf, telecommunications, and network world.

He was previously the Chairman, Founder, and Chief Technology Officer of UltraDNS Corporation, acquired by NeuStar in April of 2006.

Rodney has been involved in the IT world since 1973 when he trained as a systems analyst and programmer in the Pensions Actuarial group of the Old Mutual Life Insurance Company in Cape Town, South Africa.

After co-founding Printronic Corporation of America (UK) Pty. LTD. in London, England, in 1977, he opened American Computer Group (ACG) - the first of his US based companies - in Los Angeles in 1983. He is still very involved in ACG as both the Chairman and acting CEO. ACG is one of the leading Data Processing Service Bureaus in the Direct Response advertising and marketing industry.

In the early 1990's, following the NSF disgorgement of commercial Internet traffic from the NSFNet, Rodney launched Internet Media Network as the Internet division of ACG. In March of 1994, he established the first web-based online presence of a traditional mail- order company, Robert Redford's Sundance Catalog. In 1996 in partnership with Bechtel Enterprises, Internet Media Network was renamed Genuity, which then went on to became one of the largest ISP Data Center Operators in the world. The company was driven by Hopscotch, invented and patented by Rodney, and the very first formal content distribution and load balancing technology. He remained as the Chief Technical Officer of Genuity until the end of 1997 when Genuity was acquired by GTE Corporation. He was then appointed Vice-President, Strategic Technologies, and Chief Technology Officer of the Business Services division of GTE Internetworking.

Following his retirement from GTE Internetworking in 1999, he returned to Phoenix, Arizona, where he founded CenterGate Research Group, a technology think-tank that became the birthplace of UltraDNS, Catbird Networks, and a number of community focused services including Geektools and the whois-servers.net project.

Rodney sits on the boards of a number of technology companies, including Scientific Monitoring, an aerospace software company, and Plasmanet, one of the largest Internet database marketing networks. He is involved in a number of Internet Security Task Forces, and sits on the ICANN SSAC (Security and Stability Advisory Committee).

Rodney serves as the non-voting liaison member of the Nominating Committee, selected by the SSAC.

Norbert Klein

Norbert Klein, a German citizen living in Cambodia since 1990, started using e-mail in the early 1980's. While working with the Cambodian Ministry of Agriculture, he received a request to provide e-mail connectivity. With self-study and trial and error, he established the first e-mail system in Cambodia in 1994, then created and administered the country code address .kh, helped to get Khmer script into UNICODE, and supported the creation of a working group to develop UNICODE based Open Source Khmer software. By now this includes a fully localized Khmer language OpenOffice suite (Linux SUSE and Microsoft platforms). The Ministry of Education uses these for all Teacher Training Colleges and all high schools with computers.

Developments in Cambodia would not have been possible without international cooperation: early links included the AsiaPacific Networking Group, APRICOT, and ISOC. Norbert served on the Advisory Board of the international Francophone Institute for New Information Technologies and Education and cooperates with the Association for Progressive Communication and formerly also the Global Knowledge Partnership.

Norbert became a member of the non-commercial constituency of ICANN in 1999 and later a GNSO Council member. Since late 2008 he serves on the Nominating Committee.

Norbert is concerned that rapid developments in the global information society should not leave weaker regions of the world too far behind. He strongly supports the WSIS declared fundamental principle to develop “an Information Society, where everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge,” taking into account not only economic and legal implications but the vigorous efforts required to make the Internet a truly multi-lingual instrument.

Norbert is an Associate of the Cambodian NGO Open Institute. He edits, since more than 10 years, an English language review of the Khmer language press.

Khaled Koubaa

Khaled Koubaa is an ICT independent consultant working for the nonprofit sector in Tunisia and Arab and African region: Arab Institute for Human Rights, Tunisian Nutrition Specialist Organization, ENDA Inter Arab, Tunisian Accountants Society and FAMEX (export facilitation program). He provides training and one-on-one coaching for organizations and corporate executives on how to choose and implement new information systems and strategies. He was involved with many ICT pioneer projects in Tunisia.

Koubaa entered the Internet landscape in 1997. He has been involved with Internet Society since 2005, and he participates actively within the WSIS. He founded the Internet Society chapter in Tunisia and serves as president. He is assisting in the creation of the Arab Internet Societies. He is regularly at the ICANN meeting as the Tunisian At-Large Structure and many other events related to the Internet.

Koubaa earned his bachelor's degree in management from High School of Commerce, Tunisia. He obtained a master's degree in electronic commerce from the High School of Electronic Commerce, and he completed an Internet Governance Capacity Building Program with Diplo Foundation.

Bill Manning

Bill Manning was a contributing scientist on Neustar's UltraDNS, and served on the research staff at USC's Information Sciences Institute under Jon Postel. His primary technical interests have been in network operations and naming systems.

At Texas Instruments, Bill was responsible for the deployment of IP networking first in the Semiconductor division and then throughout the corporation. He then joined Rice University to become the lead engineer for the NSFnet's SESQUINET regional network. Based on his responsibility and performance in handling the migration of SESQUINET and MIDnet from the NSFnet to commercial networks, he was asked to assume a role in the NSFs Routing Arbitor project at ISI.

He is active in the IETF, and has been active in the DNS and Routing working groups as an active participant, working group chair and code developer. Bill was responsible for specifying the method for adding NSAP support to the DNS, and then developed and implemented plan to expand the Internet root server system to add four new nodes ... J, K, L, and M.

He is a Trustee of ARIN (American Registry for Internet Numbers) and is the managing partner in EP.NET, a private consultancy. He is a member of the Root Server System Advisory Committee and has responsibility for one of the root nameservers.

Alan Levin – Associate Chair

Alan Levin is an expert at helping organizations exploit opportunities made possible by technology. Alan is currently the Executive Director of Vanilla, an Internet services company and an Executive Director of Future Perfect Corporation. He served in various leadership positions including Chairman of the Internet Society of South Africa, member of the boards of directors of AfriNIC, the .za Domain Name Authority as well as Founding Board of Directors of the Public Interest Registry (.ORG).

Alan has spent more than 6 years designing and implementing e-government strategy in all spheres of government.  He championed the Open Source Software and Open Content (federal) government policies and has assisted numerous international organisations including the United Nations, UK Department For International Development, Markle Foundation and others, in various policy research and ICT development projects.

As a computer scientist and change management expert, he mentors leaders of technology start-ups, and lead a team responsible for implementing the first root name server in Africa. Through training and policy deliberations for African Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), he has championed change in the African IXP landscape.  Prior to 2000 Alan lead ICT developments at a health-informatics start-up, co- founded Intekom (the local incumbant Telco ISP), and worked at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) as a change management consultant.

He has a BSc in Computer Science and Industrial Psychology from the University of the Witwatersrand, and an MBA from the University of Cape Town.  Alan is married with two children and – when not online - enjoys family weekends pottering around the garden, photography and appreciating the Cape floral kingdom.

Phil Lodico

Philip Lodico is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of FairWinds Partners, LLC, a leading full-service Internet strategy consulting firm at which he offers clients authoritative knowledge on domain names, online trademark enforcement, and online traffic optimization.

Mr. Lodico has been involved in the domain name space since 2000, and with a career spent advising Global 500 and other leading brands on the domain name space, he is widely recognized as an expert on the domain name system, a thought leader in the field and a vocal advocate for consumer and business parity on the net. Mr. Lodico brings this advocacy to his work as FairWinds’ representative in ICANN’s Business Constituency. As a part of the BC, Mr. Lodico has been involved with such policy development groups as the GNSO restructuring task force and Fast Flux Working G roup.

Driven by the interest of making the Internet a safer and less confusing place, Mr. Lodico is also a founder and Vice President of the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA). CADNA is a not-for-profit corporation aimed at ending the systemic domain name abuses that plague the Internet; it does so by educating the public, lobbying government agencies and elected officials, and influencing both national and global legislative policies pertaining to the domain name space. Mr. Lodico has traveled internationally on behalf of the organization, giving informational speeches about the latest domain name infringement issues, and spreading awareness about and support for CADNA’s goals of ending brand abuse online.

Before FairWinds and CADNA, Lodico worked as a Business Development Manager at Register.com, a major global corporate domain name registrar, where he helped establish the company’s corporate services program. He graduated from Hobart College with degrees in Economics and Psychology, receiving honors for his work in Consumer Choice Theory.

Desiree Miloshevic

Desiree Zeljka Miloshevic is International Affairs and Policy Adviser at Afilias, a global leader in domain name registry services. Desiree serves as Special Advisor to the Chair of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Advisory Group (2006-) and is a Board Trustee of Internet Society (2004-2010). She has been participating in the work of several ICANN constituencies since 1999.

Her decade-plus of close and productive interactions with regulators, intergovernmental leaders, academics, artists, and community activists throughout the world provide her with a unique set of resources with which to engage the often complex, cross-sectoral challenges of Internet technical coordination and governance.

Ms. Miloshevic's work in the Internet field began in 1993 as one of the hostmasters for Demon Internet, the United Kingdom's first Internet service provider to offer access to individual Internet users in addition to corporations. She participated in the informal, peer-coordinated policy making process for the .UK domain until supervision of the UK ccTLD was assumed by Nominet in 1996. In subsequent years she has worked as an expert technical and policy consultant for new top-level domains and has participated in the work of many Internet councils, workshops and constituencies in the areas of DNS policy and Internet governance.

She studied English Literature at the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade. She has lived in London since 1991. She is fluent in Serbian, Croatian, French and English.

Ross Rader

Greg Ruth

Greg Ruth holds a Ph. D. in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His experience with the Arpanet dates back to 1973 when he was a research associate at MIT. In 1980 he left MIT to work as a senior scientist for Bolt, Beranek and Newman in that firm's involvement in transforming the Arpanet into the Internet we know today. In 1993 he moved from BBN to GTE Laboratories to continue Internet related research and development. But when GTE acquired BBN, Greg went back to GTE Internetworking, the ISP division of the former BBN, to participate in the development of advanced services. When GTE Internetworking became Genuity, he moved to the staff of the Office of the CTO. In 2002 he took a position at Verizon as a senior consultant in data communications, specializing in advanced Internet technologies. Greg has been active in the IETF as co-chair of the Real-time Traffic Flow Measurement working group and in other standards development activities. He has served in ICANN as a member of the ISPCP Constituency’s executive committee and as a member of the GNSO council since 2001.

Employer: Verizon Federal Network Systems, a division of Verizon . Verizon provides communication services throughout the USA with additional operations in North and South America and Europe.

Liz Williams

Dr Williams has been working in the Internet industry since the early 1990s. Most recently she led ICANN's policy development activities on the introduction of new top level domains and policies for contractual conditions. She has worked with ICANN on numerous occasions, notably on the 2003/2004 sTLD application process when she chaired in Sponsorship and Other Issues Evaluation Team.

She is a former Deputy Chair of the .au Domain Administration Board of Directors (www.auda.org) and has worked across the ICANN registrars' and registries' constituencies on a wide variety of policy issues. She has worked extensively in developing countries particularly in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos and in the Pacific on Internet governance and country code management. In an earlier phase in her career, she spent several years in Australia's Federal Parliament working on telecommunications issues, health policy research and environmental issues.

Dr Williams is an international affairs specialist with a doctorate in information technology and law on the globlisation of regulation and its impact on the domain name system (http://www.lizwilliams.net/academic/phd_abstract.html) and a masters in communication on regulating the Internet and privacy protection (http:// www.lizwilliams.net/academic/ma_abstract.html).

Now based in the UK, she is an accredited Company Director, a member of the Australian Internet Industry Association and the Internet Society.

Hong Xue

Dr. Hong Xue is the Fellow of Information Society Project, Yale Law School and Associate Professor of Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong. Dr. Xue specializes in intellectual property law, information technology law and the Internet governance. She has published widely in both Chinese and international journals. Dr. Xue was elected as one of the Ten Nationally Distinguished Young Jurists by the China Law Society and granted the Special Governmental Allowance for prominent contribution to social science by the State Council. She also got the Outstanding Young Researcher Award from the University of Hong Kong.She has served on many government/public and professional bodies. Internationally, she works in many governmental and non-governmental organizations. She is the only Asian Scholar in the Executive Committee of the International Association for Promotion of the Advanced Teaching and Research of Intellectual Property (ATRIP) and the Editorial Board of World Intellectual Property Journal. After serving as a founding member of the ICANN At-Large Advisory Committee for four years (2003-2007), she is on the ICANN President's Advisory Committee on Internationalized Domain Names and Nomination Committee. She is one of the founders of the Internet Users Organization in the Asia-Pacific Region.

Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."