RedCLARA Executive Director
Florencio Utreras holds a graduate degree in Mathematics and Engineering and a PhD in Engineering, has been the Executive Director of RedCLARA, the Latin American Advanced Networks Cooperation, since 2004.

He has participated actively both in his country as well as throughout the region, initially as a lecturer and later focusing on what would become his core activity –building computer networks to help develop academic knowledge and research.

Winner of the LACNIC 2011 Outstanding Achievement Award, he has been involved in Internet development and Academic Networks in the American continent for more than twenty years and has received several awards for his contribution to the dissemination of Internet technology and research networks.

Utreras played a key role in connecting Chile to global computer networks, leading the incorporation to Bitnet in 1987 and coordinating the FONDEF Project for strengthening the National University Network which allowed creating a 64-kbps link for REUNA members in 1992. In 1997 he promoted a strategic alliance between REUNA and CTC Mundo (currently Telefonica), which allowed creating REUNA2 –a broadband network from Arica to Osorno, at the time considered to be the largest in Latin America. In 1992 he contributed to the creation of REUNA (the first Latin American and Caribbean academic network). He was then part of the first RedCLARA Board of Directors and later competed for the position of Executive Director which he assumed in 2004.