Founding Organisations
WIDE Project
The WIDE Project is made up of more than 100 loosely bound organizations including various corporations and universities. Its goal is the construction of a “Dependable Internet”, one that can be used by people from all walks of life in any situation with a sense of security.
The work of the WIDE Project is carried out by more than 730 researchers in Japan, collaborating with international researchers from all over the world.
APNIC
APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre) is an open, member-based, not-for-profit organization, whose primary role is to distribute and manage Internet number resources in the Asia Pacific region’s 56 economies. These number resources are the building blocks for the Internet to operate and grow.
APNIC helps build essential technical skills across the region, supports Internet infrastructure development, produces insightful research, and is an active participant in the multistakeholder model of Internet cooperation and governance.
APNIC performs these activities as part of its commitment to a global, open, stable and secure Internet.
Directors
Professor Jun Murai
Professor Jun Murai is known as the ‘father of the Internet’ in Japan. In 1984, he developed the Japan University UNIX Network (JUNET), the first-ever inter-university network in that nation.
In 1988, he founded the Widely Integrated Distributed Environment (WIDE) Project, a Japanese Internet research consortium, for which he continues to serve as a board member.
He is dean of the Graduate School of Media and Governance and a professor at the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies at Keio University, where he earned his PhD in computer science in 1987.
He has served as President of the Japan Network Information Center (JPNIC) and as Vice President of the Japanese Internet Association. He served on the Internet Society’s Board of Trustees from 1997 to 2000. In 1998, he was appointed as one of nine initial directors of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and served until June 2003.
In 2005, he was awarded the Internet Society’s Jonathan B. Postel Service Award in recognition of his vision and pioneering work that helped spread the Internet across the Asia Pacific region. He was honoured with the 2011 IEEE Internet Award, was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2013, and was awarded the Legion of Honour by the Government of France in 2019.
Paul Wilson
Paul Wilson has nearly 30 years’ involvement with the Internet, including 26 years as the former head of APNIC, the Regional Internet Registry for the Asia Pacific.
In this role, he has led APNIC’s development as a provider of critical Internet services and as a key contributor to Internet growth and development throughout the Asia Pacific.
Previously as Technical Director and CEO of Pegasus Networks, the first private ISP in Australia, Paul worked with early Internet technologies and helped establish the Association for Progressive Communications (APC).
Paul also consulted on various Internet projects for the United Nations and other international agencies, including the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). With IDRC, Paul helped to establish many early Internet services in developing economies of the region in the early 1990s.
Paul has worked as an expert and leader across the full range of communities and organizations involved in Internet development, including ISPs and network operators, non-profit organizations, governments and governmental agencies; and with many key organizations including RIRs, the IETF, ICANN, ISOC, APEC-TEL, the ITU and others.
Craig Ng
Craig Ng is legal counsel to the Asia Pacific Internet Development Trust. He is a senior lawyer with over 30 years experience, having led well-regarded legal teams and practised in leading law firms in Australia and Malaysia.
Mr Ng also served as legal counsel to APNIC, and prior to that, Mr Ng was a partner with Australian national law firm Maddocks Lawyers, a position he held for over 10 years. He acted for clients including auDA, the ccTLD manager for .au, and played a key role in the development of the framework for the self-regulation of the .au domain name space. He served on the board of trustee for the auDA Foundation for over 10 years since its inception, and was a director and honorary secretary of the Internet Society of Australia for a number of years.
Mr Ng holds a Bachelor of Economics degree and a Bachelor of Laws degree from Monash University, Melbourne.
Dr. Hirochika Asai
Dr. Hirochika Asai is VP of Infrastructure Strategy and a senior researcher at Preferred Networks, Inc. (PFN), Japan.
After receiving his Ph.D degree from Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, the University of Tokyo (U. TOKYO), he had worked as a project assistant professor at U. Tokyo for four years. In 2017, he joined PFN as a researcher to work on Internet architecture and operating system research.
Dr. Asai has been involved in many academia and technical communities on the Internet. He has worked as a volunteer for the network operation center (NOC) of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) meetings to provide an open network for IETF participants since IETF 90 in 2014.
Dr. Asai also served as board member to WIDE Project, a member of board of trustees of Japan Network Information center (JPNIC), a visiting researcher at RIKEN, and a senior researcher at Keio Research Institute at SFC.