HEAnet CEO Ronan Byrne Honoured with GÉANT Community Award
We are proud to announce that HEAnet CEO, Ronan Byrne, has been awarded the prestigious GÉANT Community Award at this year’s TNC25 conference. This award recognises Ronan’s exceptional leadership and long-standing contributions to the European research and education networking community.
With over 20 years of dedicated service at HEAnet, Ireland’s National Research and Education Network (NREN), Ronan has played a central role in shaping both national and European digital infrastructure.
As a GÉANT Board member and Community Chair of the Network Infrastructure Advisory Committee (NIAC) since 2019, Ronan has made significant contributions to collaborative work and the development of services and technologies within the GÉANT community, while also helping to steer the association’s response to the EuroHPC Connectivity tender, a key initiative for high-performance computing across Europe.
Reflecting on the award, Ronan emphasised the importance of community collaboration:
“I’m honoured to receive the GÉANT community award. It’s been a pleasure to work with my NIAC colleagues advising GÉANT on the GN4-3N network project and, more recently, on intercontinental connectivity. I also hugely valued working with many GÉANT and NREN colleagues in responding to the recent EuroHPC Connectivity bid, which amounted to a most impressive collective team effort! It’s a great privilege to serve on the Board of GÉANT and to work closely with the GÉANT Executive Team where we support one another in driving GÉANT forward. Time and time again we see that by combining local NREN expertise with the aggregation strength of the GÉANT Association, we generate a very potent super-power!”
We extend our warmest congratulations to Ronan on this well-deserved recognition.
We also wish to acknowledge and congratulate Nicole Harris, co-recipient of the GÉANT Community Award, and Cathrin Stöver, who has been honoured with the Vietsch Foundation Medal of Honour for 2025.
