Borka Jerman Blažič (born ) is a Slovenian Internet pioneer, and the President of the Internet Society - Slovenia. She is also a computer networks scientist, founder and first general secretary of the Yugoslavian Network for the Academic and Education Community (YUNET), which introduced the first Internet services in

SFR Yugoslavia The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, commonly referred to as SFR Yugoslavia or simply as Yugoslavia, was a country in Central and Southeast Europe. It emerged in 1945, following World War II, and lasted until 1992, with the breakup of Yug ...

in 1991. Blažič graduated from the

University of Skopje The Saints Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje ( mk, Универзитет „Св. Кирил и Методиј“ во Скопје) is the oldest and largest public university in North Macedonia. It is named after the Byzantine Christia ...

, Macedonia, obtained Master of Science degree at Faculty of Electric Engineering at University of Ljubljana, Slovenia and PhD at the Faculty of Informatics and Natural Sciences, University of Zagreb, Croatia. She has spent her post-doctoral studies at the

Iowa State University Iowa State University of Science and Technology (Iowa State University, Iowa State, or ISU) is a public land-grant research university in Ames, Iowa. Founded in 1858 as the Iowa Agricultural College and Model Farm, Iowa State became one of the n ...

in Ames, U.S.A.

Career

Among other contributions, she was part of the Internet Architecture Board Character Set Workshop in 1996, and part of her previous work was used in the preparation of the RFC. In 1992-1993 she was project officer and chair of the

TERENA The Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association (TERENA, ) was a not-for-profit association of European national research and education networks (NRENs) incorporated in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The association was originally f ...

(Trans European Research and Education Networks Association) Working Group on Internationalization of the Network services. In 1996-2000 she was member of TERENA Technical Committee. Borka Jerman Blažič was the first elected chair of the European Council of the Internet Society Chapters (ISOC-ECC). Prof. Dr. Borka Jerman Blažič is a full professor at the University of Ljubljana, Department of Economics and is heading the Laboratory for Open Systems and Networks at the

Jožef Stefan Institute The Jožef Stefan Institute (IJS, JSI) ( sl, Institut "Jožef Stefan") is the largest research institute in Slovenia. The main research areas are physics, chemistry, molecular biology, biotechnology, information technologies, physics, reactor ph ...

. There she is teaching electronic communications and information security. She's also running the program on Internet technology at the postgraduate international school Jožef Stefan. She is also a senior researcher at the Department for System and Computer Sciences of the

Stockholm University Stockholm University ( sv, Stockholms universitet) is a public research university in Stockholm, Sweden, founded as a college in 1878, with university status since 1960. With over 33,000 students at four different faculties: law, humanities, so ...

. Borka Jerman Blažič is a member of the Scientific Council of the European Privacy Association. In 2011 she was appointed as a member of the Grand Jury of the World Summit Awards. She is also a member of the Slovenian Governmental Council for Electronic communications. Prof. Dr. Jerman Blažič has published hundreds of articles in international journals, conferences, books and was an invited speaker at many international conferences and workshops in the field of Information and Communication Technologies. In 2017 she was awarded the Medal for Merits by the President of Slovenia Borut Pahor.Predsednik Pahor je na slovesnosti vročil državno odlikovanje prof.dr.Borki Jerman Blažič
News story at ISOC-Slovenia The international conference Information Society 2018 recognize the work of Borka Jerman Blažič and awarded her as "The first lady of Slovenian Internet". In 2018 she published the book "Don Kihot in Slovenia or how Internet has come in Slovenia". The book was published by eBesede and Jožef Stefan institut. The book introduces the history of computer networks development in the world and the work related to the first internet line in Slovenia in 1991. The independence of Slovenia and turmoil on the Balkans in that time are presented in the book as well.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jerman Blazic, Borka Women Internet pioneers Internet Society people Engineers from Ljubljana Living people Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje alumni University of Ljubljana alumni University of Zagreb alumni Iowa State University alumni Academic staff of the University of Ljubljana Slovenian computer scientists Slovenian women computer scientists 1947 births