Meet the 2023 MANRS Mentors and Ambassadors

Training Mentor

Erika Vega is a Senior Consultant at SOCIUM and the Engineering Manager at MC&H Networks. She is also the Coordinator of the infrastructure group at the Internet Society Colombia chapter, where she supports the development of projects in the region that promote capacity building to enhance the security and stability of the Internet. She conducts workshops, webinars, training, and national and regional events on topics such as IPv6, BGP, RPKI, and MANRS. Additionally, she serves on the Board of Directors of the Latin American and Caribbean Network Operators Group (LACNOG) and is the Director of the routing group within the same organization.

Policy Mentor

Harish Chowdhary is a distinguished expert in computer applications, Internet governance, cybersecurity, and multilingual Internet systems. He is currently an academic faculty member in Internet Governance & Cybersecurity and is pursuing his Ph.D. at the National Forensic Sciences University in India and is an esteemed fellow of the Internet Society (ISOC), the Indian Internet Research & Engineering Forum, India School on Internet Governance, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, and was a MANRS Fellow in 2022. He has also contributed to developing international Internet standards and protocols through the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and is a respected author and researcher with publications in network security, data security, multilingual Internet, AI, and database security.

Research Mentor

Taejoong (Tijay) Chung is an Assistant Professor at the Computer Science department at Virginia Tech and Adjunct Professor at the Computer Science department at POSTECH in South Korea. His work focuses on Internet security, privacy implications, and Internet measurement. He received the ACM CCS Best Paper Honorable Mention Award (2022), IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize (2019), ACM IMC Distinguished Paper Award (2019), NSF CRII Award (2019), USENIX Security Distinguished Paper Award (2017), and Best Paper Award at IEEE Computer Society (ComSoc) Seoul Chapter (2010).

Training Ambassador

Anand Raje is a technology entrepreneur and researcher interested in Internet resiliency. He is researching and developing next-generation DNS artifacts and an Internet measurement platform.
Anand is passionate about engaging with diverse stakeholders through the co-founded India Internet Foundation(IIFON) to work towards a secured, stable, and resilient Internet ecosystem in the region. He helped conceptualize and establish the First MANRS-compliant community IXP in India, Kolkata IX, and contributed to bringing the first L-Root instances to India. He also conceptualized and executed the Advanced Internet Operations Research in India (AIORI) research project, which involved developing an Indigenous Internet Measurement Network (AIORI-IMN) with 100+ vantage points and a DNS Anycast research testbed for stakeholders. He regularly contributes to training and outreach associated with routing security, DNS/DNSSEC, BGP best practices, cyber frauds, and the Indian School of Internet Governance (inSIG) as well as ICANN, Internet Society, SANOG, inSIG, and the IIGF.

Policy Ambassador

Dessalegn Yehuala is a BGP, DNS, Security, and Data enthusiast. He is a Lecturer and Independent Researcher in the Computer Science Department of Addis Ababa University. He has experience in information and communication technologies as a practitioner, educator, and researcher. His research focuses on algorithmic transparency or explainability of AI/ML-powered applications.

He participates and contributes to efforts to maintain the health of the Internet infrastructure, with a keen interest in both technical and policy responses to emerging technologies and trends.

Policy Ambassador

Hernan Moguilevsky is a Senior Network Engineer at the IXP, PIT Chile. He has worked as a Networking Administrator and Head of Network Operations within the permanent technical staff of CABASE, the Argentinean IXP, and as an independent IT and networking consultant for several companies and organizations. He has international certifications and completed various telecommunications courses.

He collaborates with the development of several NOG organizations, such as ArNOG, and CL-NOG, and is currently a member of the Program Committee for LACNOG.

Research Ambassador

Jediel Adefoulou is an IT security specialist and enthusiast. He is doing a Master’s in Computer Security at IFRI in Benin and has been part of the Internet Society Chapter of Benin since 2018, where he is the technical and training manager. As a MANRS ambassador, he plans to promote routing security and recommend best practices.

Policy Ambassador

Mujtaba Hussain has 12 years of experience in ICT and cybersecurity. He actively contributes to a team responsible for Internet Governance and community engagements. More specifically, his role revolves around enhancing stakeholder proficiency in managing top-level domains and DNS servers.

Training Ambassador

Sandra Munoz holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Systems Engineering and a Cybersecurity Technologies Diploma from the Technology Institute of Monterrey in Mexico City. She has 10 years of experience working in different network administration and network operation roles, including a role at Cisco Systems as part of the Technical Assistance Center, helping companies, organizations, and governments solve issues with routing protocols, including BGP.

For the last few years, Sandra has adopted the role of a Cybersecurity Evangelist, promoting general knowledge and adoption of cybersecurity concepts, CIS Controls, and best practices at all levels and functions within organizations, as well as fostering collaboration between private and public sectors at a national level.

Training Ambassador

Sergio R. Hernández Torres is a Honduran Telecommunications Engineer with vast experience in IT, telecommunications, and project management. He is devoted to democratizing knowledge through networking and connecting people everywhere and is passionate about empowering businesses with technology. He has a Master’s Degree in Project Management, is certified as a Project Management Professional (PMP)® by PMI, and has a Master’s Degree in Communication Systems from KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Having worked at the Swedish telecom giant Arelion with customers around the globe and now working as a Technical Program Manager in Dublin for Google’s Enterprise Network Team, he expects to contribute to the Internet’s safety by collaborating with MANRS as an Ambassador.

Research Ambassador

Thomas Holterbach is a Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Strasbourg. He currently researches how to better measure Internet routing, with a particular focus on detecting BGP hijacks and anomalies. Thomas obtained his Master’s degree from the University of Strasbourg in 2014 and his Ph.D. from ETH Zurich in 2021. During his Ph.D., he focused on accelerating the BGP convergence upon Internet outages.
Aside from research, Thomas likes to teach advanced concepts about Internet routing using the mini-Internet, an open-source platform that he developed with his ETH colleagues during his Ph.D. and that is used in many universities to teach how the Internet practically works.