Robert E Kahn

Robert Kahn is Chairman, CEO and President of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), which provides funding for research and development of the U.S. National Information Infrastructure. Shortly after graduating from university, Kahn took a leave of absence from MIT where he was an Assistant Professor to join the research firm Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN). While there, he was responsible for the system design of the Arpanet, the first wide area packet-switched network. He was also a part of the BBN team developing the Interface Message Processor (IMP), a small computer that served as the Arpanet packet switch and standardized the network interface to all attached host computers. In October 1972, he organized a demonstration of the Arpanet at the International Computer Communication Conference in Washington, D.C. He then moved to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and subsequently became Director of its Information Processing Techniques Office. Soon after arrival, he initiated the Internetting project to develop an open architecture for networking, ensuring that communications could occur in a network-independent manner. While devising methods of ensuring reliable communications between such networks, he and Vint Cerf (CHM Fellow, 2000), developed the Internet architecture and basis for the TCP/IP protocol suite, first described publicly in May, 1974. Kahn later initiated the Strategic Computing Program, an effort to develop advanced hardware and software technologies. He holds a B.E.E. (City College of New York, 1960) and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees (Princeton, 1962, 1964).