From Lab to RFC: A PhD Student's Journey through the IETF

Martine Sophie Lenders has been regularly participating in the IETF for over a decade, starting with the IETF 93 meeting in Prague in 2015. She has authored several Internet-Drafts—two of which recently were published as RFCs—and at the same time works on a PhD at FU Berlin and as a research associate at TU Dresden. We asked a few questions about what her experience in the IETF has been like while pursuing an academic journey.

IETF Blog: While the IETF community is often thought of as nearly entirely composed of individuals from industry, more than a fifth of IETF participants work in academia, according to the latest IETF Community survey. What was your initial motivation to participate in the IETF?

Martine: During my undergraduate years, I wrote the network stack for RIOT, an IoT operating system, which eventually became my Master’s thesis project. For this, I had to read many IETF documents and participate in plug tests—also known as interoperability tests. Back then, dedicated plug test sessions happened in meetings right before an IETF week started. These were similar, but smaller, to what the IETF Hackathon is now. 

This is how I first got exposed to IETF and got hooked. From then I tried to participate at least once a year at one of the IETF meetings in addition to participating in mailing list discussions. Luckily, the research chair I work with was very supportive and I was able to find a PhD topic that relates to IETF work.

IETF Blog: How have you balanced your work in the IETF with your academic research, and to what degree have they been connected with each other?