Traveling scholars can thank Klaas Wierenga for making their research efforts a little easier while on the road.  

A 2019 inductee into the Internet Hall of Fame, Wierenga developed eduroam, a free, secure, international wi-fi roaming service for academic and research communities that is available in more than 100 countries worldwide. 

In a recent interview with Geant’s Connect Online, Wierenga explained how eduroam facilitated greater collaboration among universities and their neighboring communities. 

“The best thing is that eduroam is a grassroots movement where every university builds and makes its own infrastructure available to be accessible to the community. In this way everyone benefits. Of course, in the early days it was difficult to persuade them to offer their infrastructure because there were so few universities taking part and the investment in time and resources was hard to justify.”