Educational session with Dr Robert (Bob) Kahn, co-inventor of the fundamental internet protocol TCP/IP

On Wednesday, 14 March 2018, Data61 and the Australian Digital Commerce Association hosted an educational session with Dr Robert (Bob) Kahn, co-inventor of the fundamental internet protocol TCP/IP.

During this event, Dr Kahn enlightened the audience with his deep knowledge of the internet and insight into future opportunities and challenges. He also provided an outline of the Digital Object Architecture (DOA) and its importance in underpinning many emerging areas of information management.

For more information about Dr Kahn and his presentation at this event, please see the below biography and presentation slides. Data61 Presentation 3-14-18

BIOGRAPGHY: Dr Robert E. Kahn

Dr. Robert E. Kahn is Chairman, CEO and President of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), CNRI was created as a not-for-profit organization to provide leadership and funding for research and development of the National Information Infrastructure.

After receiving his Ph.D. degree from Princeton University in 1964, during which time he worked on the Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories, he became an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT. He took a leave of absence from MIT to join Bolt Beranek and Newman, where he was responsible for the system design of the Arpanet, the first packet-switched network. In 1972 he moved to DARPA and subsequently became Director of DARPA’s Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO). Dr. Kahn conceived the idea of open-architecture networking. He is a co-inventor of the TCP/IP protocols and was responsible for originating DARPA’s Internet Program.

Dr. Kahn has been developing the concept of a digital object architecture, which he will be discussing today. This architecture providesa framework for interoperability of heterogeneous information systems. It is widely used – such as the Digital Object Identifier (DOI). He will also be commenting on the notion of blockchains being a particular application of this architecture.

Dr. Kahn is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of AAAI, a Fellow of ACM and has received many awards for his work – too many to mention. He has twice received the 1997 National Medal of Technology, the 2001 Charles Stark Draper Prize from the National Academy of Engineering, the 2002 Prince of Asturias Award, and the 2004 A. M. Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in May 2006, and awarded the Japan Prize for his work in “Information Communication Theory and Technology” in 2008. He received the Harold Pender Award from the University of Pennsylvania in 2010 and the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering in 2013.

Dr. Kahn has received honorary degrees from numerous universities around the world