Dennis Jennings
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| Country: | Ireland |
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Dr. Dennis Jennings was selected to serve on the ICANN Board by the NomCom in 2007; his term expired in 2010. He served as the Board's Vice-Chair.[1]
Career History
Dr. Jennings' career has seen him pursuing venture capital endeavors, investments, serving on a variety of boards and within academia.
He co-founded 4th Level Ventures in 2002, and continues to work. 4th Level Ventures is a 17 million pound Irish venture capital company; it aims to invest in companies that are commercializing on opportunities arising form Irish research and academic institutions. Dennis is also an angel investor in a variety of early stage technology companies.[2]
Dr. Jennings was the director of University College Dublin (UCD) Computing Services from 1977 to 1999; he was responsible for the university's IT infrastructure and a staff of over 90 people. In 1986, he took leave from the University and acted as interim President of the Consortium for Scientific Computing at the John von Neumann Centre (JvNC) in Princeton, New Jersey; he took charge of starting its super computer center. Dennis is currently acting as Chairman of the Oversight Board of the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC). [3]
He is also an Internet pioneer, having been responsible for the decisions that created NSFNET (1985/86) - the network that became the Internet - while working for the US Federal Government (on leave from UCD). He was actively involved in the start-up of research networks in the Europe (EARN - President; Ebone - Board member) and Ireland (HEAnet - initial proposal and later Board member). He chaired the Board and General Assembly of the Council for European 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) during that period.[4]
Education
Dr. Jennings holds a 1st Class honours physics BSc degree from University College Dublin (1967), and a PhD degree obtained for a search for high-energy gamma radiation from pulsars (neutron stars) (1972). He is an opera and classical music enthusiast, and is the chairman of the UCD Choral Scholars Board of Management.[5]