Franco Travostino is Director for Nortel”s Advanced Technology, Office of the CTO. He propelled Nortel”s leadership in the networking aspects of the Grid vision, and their implementation in widely-known Research & Education settings (e.g., OMNInet, SURFnet, GLIF exchanges, etc.). Since March 2003, Franco co-chairs the Grid High Performance Networking Research Group at the Global Grid Forum (GGF). Franco has authored more than 30 peer-reviewed technical publications, 25 patent disclosures, and has at least 6 standard-track IETF RFCs in the queue. Gigi Karmous-Edwards. Since joining MCNC as a Principal Scientist, Gigi has focused her research on novel optical technologies and their role in Grid Computing, and leads research activities focusing on advance networking technologies for Grid computing. She has published several papers in that area. She organized and chaired the 1st International workshop for the “Optical Control Plane for the Grid Community”. Joel J. Mambretti is Director of the International Center for Advanced Internet Research at Northwestern University. He has served on the advisory boards of major technology corporations, is a frequent speaker at national and international communications technology forums, and has authored multiple articles on advanced communications.