Address: Chemin des Tattes 13, 1297 Founex, Switzerland.
Telephone / fax (+41)-22-776 3628
/ mobile: (+41)-76-420 3628
E-mail: b.segal@cern.ch
Web: http://www.cern.ch/ben
Degrees:
1958:
B.Sc., A.R.C.S., Imperial College, London.
(Physics and Mathematics)
1971:
Ph.D. Stanford University.
(Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering)
Employment:
1958-1962: U.K. Atomic Energy Authority (Fast Breeder Reactor Physics).
1962-1965: Detroit Edison Company, USA (Fast Breeder Reactor Physics).
1966-1971: General Electric Co, USA (Reactor Consultant).
1971-2002: CERN (except for 1 year sabbatical in 1977).
Since arriving at CERN in 1971, worked in the DD, CN and IT Divisions in the field of computer communications. Earliest projects were the development and installation of the CERN system of Remote Job Entry stations, "RIOS", and the design and development of the main terminal concentrators, "SUPERMUX", providing the first interactive connections to the CDC mainframes.
In 1977, took a sabbatical year to work at Bell Northern Research in Palo Alto, California, on the design of an operating system for a PABX telephone switching system. First introduction to UNIX.
From 1978-83 was deputy project leader for the "STELLA" experiment, linking CERN and five other European research laboratories by a high speed satellite connection.
From 1983, worked on the networking of heterogeneous computer systems, including the gatewaying of workstations and UNIX systems to each other and to the CERN mainframes (IBM, CDC, Vax and Cray).
From 1985-1988, appointed as CERN's first official "TCP/IP Co-ordinator", responsible for co-ordinating the introduction of the Internet protocols within CERN.
From 1987-1993, was co-responsible for the security systems required to protect the CERN Cray installation throughout its life.
From 1989 until 2002, worked in the area of distributed computing within the CERN Computing and Networking (CN) Division, over the entire period when this approach replaced central mainframes by UNIX clusters for physics analysis at CERN. Was a principal developer and the network architect for the "SHIFT" distributed mainframe project.
From 1990, responsible for introducing the first Gigabit Network services, based on UltraNet and then HIPPI, into the Computer Centre to support SHIFT and the later project "CORE".
From 1994-99, Section Leader of the Network Services section of the Physics Data Processing Group in CN (now IT) Division, responsible for the high-performance networking services supporting the CORE/SHIFT distributed system which provides all the production physics computing at CERN.
From 1999-2002, Section Leader of the Technology for Experiments section of PDP Group, responsible for development effort in future technologies for LHC including High Performance and Storage Area Networks and Commodity PC Clusters. The section also had responsibility for CERN's online Central Data Recording Service which supported about 30 experiments and LHC test beams in acquiring and recording their data in the Computer Centre's mass storage systems, at data rates up to 100MBytes/sec.
From late 1999 until retirement in 2002, Manager of EDG WP2, responsible for the Data Management architecture of the new "European Data Grid" Project.
[Retired from CERN in 2002, but continues part-time activities there as an invited honorary staff member].
External professional activities related to work at CERN:
Teaching & Consulting
Consultant for Unix, Internet protocols and general networking
technology to many external universities and institutes, including
teaching extended courses at:
- ICTP, Trieste (1986, 1988, 1990)
- Uppsala University, Sweden (1988)
- Nathiagali, Pakistan (1988)
- ITEP, Russia (1990)
- Universidad de Los Andes, Merida, Venezuela (1992, 1995)
- LAPP Annecy (1992, 1993)
- PNPI, Russia (1993)
- IUCAA, Pune, India (1994)
- University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka (1995)
- IHEP Beijing, China (1996)
- ICIMAF Havana, Cuba (1997)
Internet Society (ISOC)
1997: Elected to the Internet Society Board of Trustees.
Previously a co-founder (1995) and then Vice-President (1996-1999) of the Geneva
Chapter of the Internet Society.
Also founder and Chairman (1995-1998) of the Geneva ISOC Special Interest
Group for Developing Countries (DevSIG).
1998: Co-organizer of the INET'98 International Conference, Palexpo
Geneva, and its associated eight days of Internet Technology Workshops for
the training of 165 developing country engineers.