Itojun Service Award

The Itojun Service Award, established by the friends of Dr. Jun-ichiro “Itojun” Hagino and administered by the Internet Society (ISOC), recognises and commemorates the extraordinary dedication of Itojun to IPv6 development. The award includes a presentation crystal, a US$3,000 honorarium, and a travel grant.

The award is named after Dr. Jun-ichiro “Itojun” Hagino, who passed away in 2007, aged just 37. Itojun worked as a Senior Researcher at Internet Initiative Japan Inc. (IIJ), was a member of the board of the Widely Integrated Distributed Environment (WIDE) project, and from 1998 to 2006 served on the groundbreaking KAME project in Japan as the “IPv6 samurai”. He was also a member of the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) from 2003 to 2005.

The award is focused on pragmatic technical contributions, especially related to development or operation of IPv6 networking, keeping with the spirit of servicing the Internet. With respect to the spirit, the selection committee seeks contributors to the Internet as a whole; open source developers are a common example of such contributors, although this is not a requirement for expected nominees. While the committee primarily considers practical contributions such as software development or network operation, higher level efforts that help those direct contributions will also be appreciated in this regard.

Nominees’ contribution should be substantial, but could be immature or ongoing; this award aims to encourage the contributor to continue their efforts, rather than only recognizing well established work. Finally, contributions of a group of individuals will be accepted as deployment work is often done by teams or organizations, not just a single outstanding individual.

Past Award Recipients