DANTE International Relations
DANTE's International Relations are handled by:
International Relations Manager
Cathrin Stöver
International Relations team
John Chevers
Helga Spitaler.
Cathrin Stöver - International Relations Manager
In December 2007, Cathrin Stöver was promoted to the position of International Relations Manager responsible for the management of relationships with NRENs across Europe and also with those organisations DANTE co-operates with in other world regions. In addition, the IRM group oversees the portfolio of global products and services available to NRENs and their users, and provides support and information.
Cathrin originally joined DANTE in October 1997 as External Relations Manager and became Project Manager of the ALICE project in 2002. Under her management, ALICE led to the creation of the Latin American RedCLARA network and the CLARA organisation.
Cathrin has a degree in European Business Studies and having spent time studying and working in Germany, France, the UK and US, she is now based in Madrid, Spain.
John Chevers - project manager
John Chevers has been a project manager at DANTE since August 2004. He works to facilitate the establishment and maintenance of successful partnerships between DANTE, the NRENs and the research and education community. He has a particular responsibility for the delivery of point-to-point circuits and the support of large user groups across Europe and globally.
As part of his user support work, John is an activity leader and board member for the EXPReS radio astronomy project and has managed the delivery of a number of international network connections for the eVLBI community.
John is also project manager for ORIENT: the project which connects European networks to their Chinese counterparts.
He trained as a physicist and holds a PhD in Fluorescence Spectroscopy and an MSc in Optoelectronics. His interest in advanced networks stems from his days in the optical components business when he worked for Marconi PLC and Bookham PLC.
Helga Spitaler - Regional Marketing Officer
Helga has been with DANTE since October 2004. Following a year as full time mum, Helga returned to DANTE in February 2008, joining the newly created International Relations Team. As Regional Marketing Officer she is primarily involved with providing marketing support for regional network projects which DANTE is actively participating in, currently ALICE, EUMEDCONNECT and TEIN2. Building on an application-based approach, she helps to define and implement marketing initiatives aimed at illustrating how regional backbones and their interconnection to the European GÉANT2 enable current and prospective users to participate in global collaborative research and education.
Previously Helga was part of the Public Relations team where she was in charge of managing DANTE’s events and was also involved in user segmentation. In addition, Helga focused on promotional activities for TEIN2, the Asia-Pacific research network, contributing to its successful launch as well as to securing its future funding.
Helga has a background in international conference production and event marketing, gained mainly as Executive Education Programme Manager at the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge and during her employment with Applied Market Information (AMI), a Bristol-based consultancy company for the global plastics industry.
Helga holds a degree in Interpreting from University of Trieste, Italy.
