Professor Jun Murai is this year’s recipient of the Internet Society’s prestigious Jonathan B. Postel Service Award. The award recognizes Professor Murai’s vision and pioneering work that helped countless others to spread the Internet across the Asia Pacific region.
The Postel Award was presented during the 63rd meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in Paris, France by Daniel Karrenberg, chair of this year’s Postel award committee, and Lynn St. Amour, President and CEO of the Internet Society.
“Jun Murai has always encouraged, inspired and helped others, particularly his students and his colleagues in other parts of the Asia Pacific region,” said Karrenberg. “He has also played a key role in creating structures for Internet coordination in the region (particularly APNIC), and he is widely recognized for his recent pioneering work in IPv6 implementation.”
Jun Murai is currently Vice-President, Keio University in Japan, where he is a Professor in the Faculty of Environmental Information. In 1984, he developed the Japan University UNIX Network (JUNET), and in 1988 established the WIDE Project (a Japanese Internet research consortium) of which he continues to serve as the General Chairperson. He is President of the Japan Network Information Center (JPNIC), a former member of the Board of Trustees of the Internet Society and a former member of ICANN’s Board of Directors.
The Jonathan B. Postel Service Award was established by the Internet Society to honour those who have made outstanding contributions in service to the data communications community. The award is focused on sustained and substantial technical contributions, service to the community, and leadership. With respect to leadership, the nominating committee places particular emphasis on candidates who have supported and enabled others in addition to their own specific actions.
The award is named after Dr. Jonathan B. Postel, who embodied all of these qualities during his extraordinary stewardship over the course of a thirty-year career in networking. He served as the editor of the RFC series of notes from its inception in 1969, until 1998. He also served as the ARPANET “numbers Czar” and the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority over the same period of time. He was a founding member of the Internet Architecture Board and the first individual member of the Internet Society, where he also served as a trustee.