Harold (Hal) Abelson is Class of 1922 Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and a Fellow of the IEEE. Abelson has played key roles in creating several of MIT’s institutional educational technology initiatives, including MIT OpenCourseWare and DSpace. He is currently director of the MIT App Inventor project. App Inventor’s goal is to make it easy for anyone to create mobile applications. The MIT App Inventor system hosts more than a million active users each month. Abelson collaborates in directing MIT Internet Policy Research Initiative, whose goal is helping to guide governments and private sector institutions around the world in framing sustainable, effective Internet and cybersecurity policy. Together with MIT colleague Gerald Sussman, Abelson developed the computer science subject, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. Abelson is a leader in the worldwide movement towards openness and democratization of culture and intellectual resources. He is a founding director of Creative Commons, Public Knowledge, and the Free Software Foundation, and a former director of the Center for Democracy and Technology — organizations that are devoted to strengthening the global intellectual commons.
Keith Besgrove is the Vice Chair of Internet Australia. Keith has had a distinguished career at the forefront of Australian and international digital economy development issues. As a head of division in both the former National Office of the Information Economy (NOIE) and Department of Communications he was responsible for a wide range of digital economy policy issues. He has represented the Australian Government on a wide spectrum of both national and international organisations and events, including oversight of the delegation to ICANN of .au delegation to auDA. For five years he chaired the OECD’s Working Party on Information Security and Privacy.
Linus Chang is the CEO & founder of Scram Software. Linus founded Scram Software to address the security issues faced by businesses when using the cloud. Linus started programming computers aged seven. He spent his spare time coding up hobby projects and learning different programming languages, winning numerous awards and subsequently representing Australia in programming as a teenager. Shortly after graduating from Monash University (Melbourne, Australia), he ventured into business and entrepreneurship. Linus is also known for creating the BackupAssist product, which has sold over 100,000 copies to the Small to Medium Business (SMB) market in 165 countries.
Mark Nottingham has helped develop the Web and the Internet since the late 90’s. He has written, edited or substantially contributed to more than twenty IETF RFCs and W3C Recommendations about topics like HTTP, caching, linking, Web architecture and security. He has chaired the HTTP Working Group since 2007 and the QUIC Working Group since 2016, and has been a member of the Internet Architecture Board since 2017. Before that, he served on the W3C Technical Architecture Group. Beyond standards work, he helped deploy a precursor to “enterprise” CDNs in 1998, designed HTTP APIs and owned a caching platform at Yahoo!, and has contributed to several Open Source projects.
Christine Runnegar leads the Internet Society’s policy agenda on trust which advocates for policies that support an open, globally-connected, secure and trustworthy Internet. With a background in regulatory litigation and an international outlook, Christine complements her privacy and security expertise with a deep appreciation of technology. She rolls up her sleeves to work with governments and other stakeholders to write guiding policies on cybersecurity and privacy, and is not afraid of hackathons. Christine co-chairs the W3C Privacy Interest Group (PING), has served as a member of the ENISA Permanent Stakeholders Group and is the architect of the Internet Society’s policy framework for an open and trusted Internet. One of her current areas of focus is encryption. As an avid user of encrypted services, untangling the debate around law enforcement access in a way that reinforces Internet security, is both a professional and a personal goal.
Dr. Vanessa Teague is the chair of the cybersecurity and democracy network at the University of Melbourne. She is interested in cryptographic protocols that support a free and democratic society. Dr. Teague did her B.Sc (hons) at The University of Melbourne and her Ph.D. at Stanford University on the economic analysis of multiparty cryptographic protocols. Her research has two main themes: verifiable and transparent electronic elections, and privacy and big data. In each case, understanding the limitations of existing solutions is part of designing better ones.
Martin Thomson is an engineer at Mozilla. There he works on open standards in both the IETF and W3C. His recent work includes HTTP/2 and Web Push, and he is a core contributor to HTTP, TLS, and WebRTC. He previously worked at Microsoft, Commscope and Nortel on system architecture. Technical interests are privacy, security, and the messy interface where standardized protocols are applied to real problems.
Peter Tonoli is a Board member of Electronic Frontier Australia, Director at Internet Australia, and a Senior Technical Fellow at Blueprint for Free Speech. Peter has more than 20 years experience in the Australian IT industry; having been involved with the internet since its inception in Australia. He cut his teeth through the establishment and system administration of seminal internet services. Peter’s 17 years working in IT management within the medical research and education sectors have provided him with a unique foundational understanding of health informatics and technological convergence within the medical research field. Peter also works as an independent information architecture and security consultant in the non-profit sector for numerous free speech and data sovereignty based organisations.
