Milton Mueller

Dr. Milton Mueller is Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. A passionate advocate of Internet freedom and transnational governance for the Internet, his research focuses on property rights, institutions and global governance in communication and information industries.

As one of the founders of the Internet Governance Project, Mueller helped create an alliance of scholars in action around global Internet policy issues. His book Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace (MIT Press, 2002) was the first book-length analysis of the political and economic forces leading to the creation of ICANN. His new book about Internet governance, Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance (MIT Press, 2010), examines the Internet as a site of institutional innovation that transcends the nation state but also serves as the situs of conflict between national and global forms of regulation and control. Currently, he is doing research on the ISP intermediary responsibility, IP addressing policy, the policy implications of Deep Packet Inspection technology and the security governance practices of ISPs.

Mueller has played a leading role in organizing and mobilizing civil society in ICANN and in the Internet Governance Forum. He was a founder of the Noncommercial Users Constituency in ICANN and served as its chair for several terms. He has served as an elected member of ICANN's GNSO Council and has worked on various task forces related to new top level domains, Whois/privacy, and the .org reassignment. Mueller is on the Advisory Council of Public Interest Registry (.org).

Mueller received the Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1989. He did his undergraduate work at various institutions in Chicago, specializing in Animation, Filmmaking and so-called "new media" technologies in the mid-1970s, ultimately receiving the B.A. from Columbia College in 1976.From January 2008 to December 2010 he held the XS4All Chair devoted to the "security and privacy of Internet users" at the Technology University of Delft, Netherlands. From 1998 to 2015, he was at Syracuse University; in Fall 2015 he moved to the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech