Faculty DirectoryJoe Mambretti
Director of the International Center for Advanced Internet Research
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Email Joe Mambretti
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International Center for Advanced Internet Research
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Biography
Joel J. Mambretti is Director of the International Center for Advanced Internet Research at Northwestern University, which is focused on developing digital communications for the 21st Century. The Center, which was created in partnership with a number of major high-tech corporations, focuses on large scale next-generation communications infrastructure, networks, and applications (metro, regional, national, and international). The Center also undertakes public policy projects related to large scale communications infrastructure.
He is also Director of the Metropolitan Research and Education Network, or MREN, an advanced high-performance network interlinking organizations in seven upper-Midwest states. MREN, which designed and developed the world's first GigaPOP, is now designing the Optical MREN, based on wavelength switching. With its corporate partners, iCAIR has established the Optical Metro Network Initiative, which has created the OMNInet testbed, the world's first 10GE service trial, based on dynamic wavelength switching.
iCAIR has partnered with the Electronic Visualization Lab of the University of Illinois at Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory and other research partners to create and manage StarLight, an international and national communications exchange facility for global advanced networks in Chicago . StarLight is the successor to the Science and Technology Advanced Research Transit Access Point (STARTAP.net), funded by the National Science Foundation.
Joe is a founding member of the worldwide TransLight facility for advanced networks and of the Global Lambda Integrated Facility initiative, which is creating a worldwide facility for next-generation global communications based on optical networks. Other iCAIR projects have created large-scale networks for advanced digital media including the world's first Global Internet Digital Video Network, and joint research with C-SPAN.
Joe serves on the executive committee of I-WIRE, which has created a statewide optical network for research in the State of Illinois . He is a member of Chicago 's Council of Technology Advisors (MCTA), the Governor's Broadband Task Force for Illinois , and has Chaired the Council's Committee on Information Technology Infrastructure.
He has been a member of numerous committees, projects, and initiatives directed at shaping national, state, local, and international communications policy related to large-scale infrastructure development and implementation. Also, he has served on the advisory boards of major technology corporations, is a frequent speaker at national and international communications technology forums, and he has authored multiple scholarly articles on advanced communications. Among his publications are two books published by Wiley, "Grid Networks: Enabling Grids with Advanced Communication Technology" "Next Generation Internet: Creating Advanced Networks and Services."