Karl Rauscher is a strategic advisor to private industry and governments for breakthroughs at the intersection of technology, business and policy. He is a Commissioner and Managing Director of the Global Information Infrastructure Commission (GIIC), which provides a platform for business leaders to provide key insights for policy makers on emerging critical issues. 

 

A Bell Labs Fellow, Mr. Rauscher served as the Executive Director of the Bell Labs Network Reliability & Security Office of Alcatel-Lucent, cited for the first achievement of “6 9’s” for a public network system (i.e. 99.9999% uptime) and for being instrumental in shaping the post-September 11, 2001 U.S. strategy for communications infrastructure protection.

 

Mr. Rauscher has served as an advisor for senior government and industry leaders on five continents, including as vice chair of the U.S. President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC) industry executive committee and as leader of the European Commission-sponsored study on the Availability and Robustness of Electronic Communications Infrastructures (ARECI), whose guidance is serving as a catalyst for European information and communications technology security.  Mr. Rauscher also founded the Wireless Emergency Response Team (WERT), which led search and rescue efforts using advanced wireless technology in the disaster sites of September 11, 2001 and the 2005 Hurricane Katrina New Orleans flood. 

 

As CTO and Distinguished Fellow of the EastWest Institute, Mr. Rauscher led the first track 2 China-U.S. bilaterals on cyber security with implemented recommendations.  At the same time, he led Russia-U.S. track 2 bilaterals; the output was the first rendering of the Geneva and Hague Conventions into cyberspace and the first definitions for critical terminology for cyber conflict. 

 

He served as Ambassador-at-Large & Chief Architect of Cyberspace Policy for the ~400,000 member IEEE, where he coached technologists to become effective contributors to technology policy decision making for issues of high consequence. 
Working closely with the international financial services sector, he led the IEEE Reliability of Global Undersea Communications Cable Infrastructure (ROGUCCI) Study, which provided guidance for improving the resilience of the critical international infrastructure that underpins the Internet.

 

Mr. Rauscher serves on several corporate boards, both governance and strategic advisory, for technology start-ups in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. He is an inventor with over 50 patents/pending that span the fields of artificial intelligence, advanced software testing, critical infrastructure protection, emergency communications, energy and water conservation, audio performance optimization, telemedicine, cyber conflict policy, battlefield safety and resilient design.  
 
Mr. Rauscher earned Electrical Engineering degrees with high distinction from Pennsylvania State University and Rutgers University and participated in M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management executive development program and the Director's College of the Stanford University Rock Center for Corporate Governance.