The GARR Board of Directors has appointed the new director Claudia Battista, who will be at the helm of the Consortium GARR Association starting from 1 November 2022.

The appointment was announced today, on the occasion of the GARR "Net Makers" Workshop, the annual meeting of the Italian R&E network with its user community.

Former deputy director and manager of the Network Department, Battista succeeds Federico Ruggieri, who took office in 2015. Following Battista’s appointment, the roles of deputy director and coordination of two of the GARR Departments are also renewed: the new deputy director is Massimo Carboni, Chief Technical Officer and former coordinator of the Infrastructure Department, while the new coordinator of the Network Department is Sabrina Tomassini, Telecommunications engineer and the former coordinator of GARR network planning team. Battista also assumed the interim coordination of the third GARR department, Computing and Distributed Storage (CSD).

"The GARR network is a project to which I have contributed throughout my working life and taking the lead today, at a time when we are migrating to the new Terabit GARR-T network, one of our greatest achievements so far, is for me a crowning achievement from a professional point of view - but also a great challenge “ declared the new director. “I take up the legacy of Federico Ruggieri - and of Enzo Valente before him, the founder of GARR - with the ambition of continuing to grow and strengthen an infrastructure and an organization that since its very beginnings has always supported those who carry out research, training and culture in our country in the fundamental activity of communicating and collaborating.”

To her go the congratulations of the outgoing director: "Claudia’s appointment by the GARR Board of Directors represents a choice of continuity which I believe is a recognition of the great work done, often far from the spotlight, up to now, by her and by the whole GARR team; but it is also an encouragement to continue in the direction traced so far, that of a healthy, agile organization capable of maintaining itself at high levels of innovation, but always at the service of the needs of the research and education community. I am sure she will be able to face this new adventure with more skill and passion than ever. "

Bio

Claudia Battista graduated in Physics at the University of Rome Sapienza in 1987, with an experimental thesis at the INFN national laboratories in Frascati. Since then, she has been working on data transmission networks, actively participating in the design and implementation of the first GARR network and its evolutions, and over time assuming the role of deputy director and manager of the Network Department.

Between 2013 and 2016 she coordinated the GARR-X Progress structural enhancement project, which implemented a nation-wide fiber-optics network infrastructure based on cutting-edge networking technologies, in the four Regions of Convergence (Calabria, Campania, Apulia and Sicily). She coordinated the participation of GARR in the projects for the creation and evolution of the European research network GÉANT and in the projects for the creation of the interconnection network of academic and research networks of the countries bordering the Mediterranean basin (EUMEDConnect). To this day, she acted as the Deputy Representative (Deputy) for the GARR network in the corporate bodies of the GÉANT Association, the association of Education and Research Networks in Europe that promotes and coordinates R&D activities relating to network technologies and their deployment in the academic and research environment, and which decides the development and management strategies of the European GÉANT network.