Peter O’Neil has over 35 years of technical, operational, and leadership experience in high performance computing and wide area networking initiatives including multiple large-scale projects sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, NASA, NOAA, and National Institutes of Health. After helping found and direct National Lambda Rail, a non-profit, the first national fiber based optical network for the higher education and research community, the network was sold to a high net worth individual where O’Neil was VP Research Alliances focused on genomic and biomedical community oncology efforts.
Mr. O’Neil was Executive Director of the Mid-Atlantic Crossroads (MAX), the regional fiber optical network for Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia, Senior Consultant in the Scientific Computing Division of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, and a member of the management and technical committees of the Front Range GigaPoP, and the Western Research Network. Previous technical roles included Chief Architect at Callisma, Inc., a member of the Executive Staff, Internet Architecture & Technology at MCI, Director for Network Development at Advanced Network & Services (ANS), a not-for-profit company formed by MCI, IBM, and Merit to manage the NSFnet cooperative agreement to upgrade and expand the NSFnet, and Senior Corporate Research & Architecture Manager at Digital Equipment Corporation in Massachusetts.
He has been a Principal Investigator, Co-PI, or Senior Personnel on several federal agency supported research projects.
Mr. O'Neil earned a Bachelors degree in English Literature/Psychology from Boston University, and a Masters degree in Organizational Strategy & Behavior from Harvard University. He was a visiting scientist at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab studying analogical reasoning and a visiting researcher at Harvard studying cognitive science, cognitive neuroscience, human memory, and conceptual development.