Open Networking Foundation Selects ESnet’s Inder Monga as one of 12 Research Associates

 The Open Networking Foundation (ONF), a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting Software-Defined Networking (SDN), has announced the appointment of 12 Research Associates to the organization. ESnet Chief Technologist Inder Monga is one of nine new industry thought leaders named as a Research Associate for the coming year.

The Research Associates are identified by ONF as being especially active in the SDN space, to the degree that they should be helping ONF produce its products rather than just building on them. Individuals are selected based on significant contributions to the creation and advancement of SDN and the OpenFlow™ standard, as well as a need to be involved within ONF to accomplish pertinent goals. Research Associates are given complete ONF participation privileges based on the merits of their past research, prominence in the field, and relevance to ONF’s mission.

“This is a great honor and also very fitting recognition of Inder’s leadership and expertise in this developing field of SDN and the use of OpenFlow,” said ESnet Director Greg Bell. “He is only one of two Research Associates not working on research sponsored by a university, which also reflects ESnet’s contributions to high performance networking research.”

Monga, who joined ESnet in 2009, plays a key role in developing and deploying advanced networking services for collaborative and distributed “big-data” science. He has helped contribute to multiple standards in the distributed systems community with currently active roles as the co-chair of the Network Services Interface working group in the Open Grid Forum. He also drives a number of initiatives in the global research and education community and is the co-chair of the Next-Generation Architecture and Distributed Topology Exchange working group at Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF) consortium. He is also the ESnet area lead for network engineering, tools and research.

“ONF is focused on the successful commercialization of SDN and the OpenFlow standard. We are not a research organization; however, our ties to the research community have always been important. As is the case with these Research Associates, our work is enriched and made more relevant by the deep skills and technical perspectives of these exceptional researchers,” said Dan Pitt, executive director of the Open Networking Foundation. “The knowledge of these researchers is instrumental to keeping ONF and its member companies at the forefront of the SDN movement.”

Research Associates are invited and appointed by ONF through a nomination process that involves member companies, self-nominations, and designations by the executive director. Appointments are for one year and are renewable.