UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Vinton G. Cerf, vice president and chief internet evangelist for Google since October 2005, will serve as the keynote speaker at the spring commencement ceremony for the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST). The ceremony will take place at 3 p.m. Saturday, May 5, in Pegula Ice Arena on Penn State's University Park campus.
Widely known as one of the "fathers of the internet," Cerf is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols — the language a computer uses to connect to other computers and networks — and the architecture of the internet. In his current role, Cerf contributes to global policy development and continued standardization and spread of the internet.
"Penn State IST graduates are entering a world in which artificial intelligence and machine learning are rapidly gaining new capabilities,” said Cerf. “I wish I were 21 again!"
Cerf is a recipient of numerous awards and commendations for his work. He, along with his colleague Robert E. Kahn, received the U.S. National Medal of Technology in 1997, the ACM Alan M. Turing Award in 2004, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005.
He has held several government-appointed roles and led a variety of national boards, including serving as president of the Association for Computing Machinery, chairman of the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, and founding president of the Internet Society. Cerf served as a member of the U.S. Presidential Information Technology Advisory Committee and was appointed by President Obama to serve on the National Science Board beginning in February 2012. Cerf also holds an appointment as distinguished visiting scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he is working on the design and implementation of an interplanetary internet.
“We are thrilled and honored to have Dr. Cerf serve as the College of IST’s spring commencement speaker,” said Andrew Sears, dean of IST. “After all, without his expertise and pioneering contributions to the internet, our college — based largely on information technology in the digital age — would likely not exist.”
“Dr. Cerf exemplifies the success, work ethic, and drive that we aim to instill in our students,” he added.
Before joining Google, Cerf held leadership roles at the Corporation for National Research Initiatives; the U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency; Stanford University; and MCI, where he led the engineering of MCI Mail, the first commercial email service to be connected to the internet.
Cerf holds a bachelor of science degree in mathematics from Stanford University and master of science and doctoral degrees in computer science from UCLA. He also holds 29 honorary doctorates from various global institutions.
More information about spring commencement ceremonies can be found on the Commencement at Penn State website.