Vint Cerf is one of the most celebrated contributors to the history of the Internet. Known as a “Father of the Internet,” Cerf is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet. In December 1997, President Bill Clinton presented the U.S. National Medal of Technology to Cerf and his colleague, Robert E. Kahn, for founding and developing the Internet. In 2004, Cerf and Kahn received the ACM Alan M. Turing award (sometimes called the “Nobel Prize of Computer Science”), and in 2005 the two were given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George Bush.
Cerf began his work at the United States Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) playing a key role in leading the development of Internet and Internet-related data packet and security technologies. From 1994 to 2005, Cerf was the senior vice president of Technology Strategy for MCI. He served as founding president of the Internet Society from 1992-1995, and in 1999 was chairman of the Internet Society Board. He also served as chairman of the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) from 2000-2007, and president of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) from 2012-2014.
Cerf was appointed by President Obama for a six year term on the National Science Board beginning in May 2012. Since 2005, he has served as vice president and chief Internet evangelist for Google. In this role, he continues to contribute to global policy development and continued standardization and spread of the Internet.
