INDUSTRY

National LambdaRail, inc. (NLR), a major initiative of U.S. research universities and private sector technology companies, has appointed Gwendolyn Huntoon as interim director of operations. She currently serves as director of networking for the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) and is a member of the NLR Board of Directors. "The members of NLR will benefit immensely from Wendy's vast experience at the frontier of high-performance research and education networking," said Tom West, CEO of NLR. "With her record of accomplishment and her longstanding leadership in the advanced networking community, she brings an extremely valuable set of skills to the task of finalizing the buildout of the NLR infrastructure." Ms. Huntoon has served in her current role at PSC since 1999, during which time she has been actively engaged with researchers participating in various major research projects such as the National Science Foundation's TeraGrid project. Between July 2001 and June 2004 she served as the first executive director of The Quilt, a coalition of advanced regional network organizations. "It's a privilege to be able to help put this infrastructure in the hands of researchers who will create the next generation of networking technologies," said Ms. Huntoon. "As we improve the performance of our networks and experiment with new networking techniques, we'll be enabling a new breed of high-performance and network applications." NLR is deploying a nationwide optical network infrastructure that uses Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) to provide up to 40 simultaneous light wavelengths, each capable of transmitting 10 gigabits per second. This infrastructure provides the ability to provision dedicated network resources for production and experimental networks that exist side-by-side yet are physically and operationally separate. The infrastructure simultaneously supports cutting-edge network research as well as ambitious scientific projects that require guaranteed levels of networking reliability, availability, and performance.