The Vietsch Foundation awards the 2025 Medal of Honour to Cathrin Stöver

The recipient of the 2025 medal of honour of the Vietsch Foundation is Cathrin Stöver, Chief Communications Officer of GÉANT. The medal was presented to Cathrin on 10 June 2025, during an award ceremony at the TNC opening plenary of TNC25 in Brighton, UK.

The medal is awarded annually to people who have made a contribution of lasting value to the research and development of advanced Internet technology aimed to support science, research and higher education.

The board of trustees of the Vietsch Foundation chose Cathrin Stöver out of a large group of nominees, including several ones from previous years. The board recognised Cathrin’s successful long-term achievements and were particularly impressed by her contributions in connecting NRENs in Latin America and Africa as well as in strengthening and focusing the European community in her role as CCO at GÉANT, particularly vis-a-vis the European Commission where she succeeded in bringing EC-NREN relations to a higher level. The trustees also valued Cathrin Stöver’s role in the GÉANT CONNECT magazine and her championing of GÉANT’s yearly Women in STEM campaign.

“It’s been a real pleasure to award this year’s medal of Honour to a former colleague, who has been leading and motivating communities for a long time and who Karel Vietsch esteemed very much”

said Valentino Cavalli, Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Vietsch Foundation.

In accepting the award Cathrin Stöver said:

“I am honoured to receive the Vietsch Medal of Honour. I have very fond memories of working closely with Karel Vietsch. Karel’s high degree of organisation and his attention to community consensus-building always resonated very much with me and I cherish this award as a personal memory of Karel. I would also like to thank the Vietsch Foundation for their ongoing and unwavering championing of the Ukrainian NREN, URAN. This support is bringing out the best in our community and shows true NREN solidarity. This strong community spirit is the reason for the ongoing success of the global NREN model and I am happy, proud and at the same time humbled, to have been a part of it for so many years.”

Cathrin Stöver is Chief Communications Officer at GÉANT. She has 28 years of experience working in the European and global Research and Education networking community where she has been a consistent, reliable and active player in the European GÉANT projects contributing to their ongoing excellence. Cathrin has built NRENs as well as regional organisations and their backbone infrastructures in Latin America and in the African continent.

Over the past five years, Cathrin has led GÉANT and its membership through the changing European landscape of emerging new policies and resulting activities, raising early awareness and advising on the positioning of the organisation and the membership. . In her work, Cathrin focuses on mutual benefits and opportunities with a commitment to collaboration and knowledge sharing, as well as inclusive team building across cultures or continents always based on a foundation of mutual respect, partnership and trust.

The mission of the Vietsch Foundation is to promote research and development of advanced Internet technology for scientific research and higher education. The Vietsch Foundation fulfils its goals in two ways: First, it contributes funding to specific research and development projects that demonstrate potential value to progress European and global research and education networking. And second, each year it awards a medal of honour to people who have contributed to the development of services or technologies of lasting value that are used by the networking community and its users in research, development and education. The Foundation was created through the last will and testament of Willem Karel Vietsch (1952–2014), a Dutch expert, a leader of the international Internet community, and also the Secretary-General of TERENA, a former association of European national research and education networks.