CENIC's CEO and President Resigns to Lead New National Network Initiative

Cypress, California (May 3, 2004) — Today Tom West, CENIC’s president and chief executive officer, announced that he is resigning his position effective June 30, 2004 to accept full-time responsibility as chief executive officer of the National LambdaRail, Inc. (NLR).

For the past year, West has been leading both CENIC and NLR. West said that "thanks to the willingness of both the CENIC and NLR boards I have had a dual assignment. However, we all realized that when the NLR got steady traction it would need full-time leadership. That day has arrived."

"For the last few months, CENIC has operated very well under the capable leadership of Jim Dolgonas, CENIC's chief operating officer, and CENIC's seasoned and competent staff," West said. "Indeed, they have all stepped up to the plate to help effectively manage the day-to-day operations over the past few months."

"Tom has done an outstanding job at CENIC, evolving us from a small startup into a stable operating entity serving the diverse needs of the research and education community in California. He will be hard to replace," said John Silvester, CENIC chair and NLR board member. "Over the last few years, a major CENIC accomplishment has been the deployment of our next-generation CalREN network backbone, which utilizes leased dark fiber to deploy a multi-layer advanced network – one that has been emulated by many other states and even some other nations. In fact, it was this CENIC initiative, led by Tom, that inspired the formation of NLR which is constructing a similar infrastructure at the national level. It made sense for Tom to lead both CENIC and NLR during a transition period until NLR attracted sufficient funding to be viable. That time has now come and NLR needs the attention of a full-time CEO. CENIC's loss will be NLR's gain. This next generation network infrastructure at the state, national, and soon international levels allows the research community to explore new frontiers and at the same time provides a robust advanced network for production use by the education community. We wish Tom the best and look forward to working with him at NLR."

About CENIC

CENIC is a not-for-profit corporation serving the California Institute of Technology, California State University, Stanford University, University of California, University of Southern California, California Community Colleges and the statewide K-12 school system. CENIC’s mission is to facilitate and coordinate the development, deployment and operation of a set of robust multi-tiered advanced network services for this research and education community. More information about CENIC can be found at www.cenic.org.