Mirjam Kühne

Between a fragile prototype shown in Moscow in 2009 and a mature publication handed to a new editor in 2020, Mirjam Kühne helped give experimental Internet-infrastructure work a public life: not by claiming the tools as her own, but by explaining why unfinished ideas, measurements and demos should be visible early enough for a technical community to question, test and reuse them.

Mirjam Kühne's public record sits in a place the internet often depends on but rarely celebrates: the chairing, community-building, policy stewardship, and administrative governance that keep shared technical institutions legitimate. As RIPE Chair, former RIPE NCC community builder, creator and curator of RIPE Labs, former Internet Society Senior Program Manager involved in technical workshops, long-serving IETF Education Team chair, and current chair of the IETF Administration LLC Board, Kühne shows why neutral process work is infrastructure, not ceremony.