Dream, reality or necessity? In 2001, a trans-atlantic tele-robotic surgery, code-named Lindbergh, was performed from NY by Drs. Jacques Marescaux (the principal surgeon) and Dr. Michel Gagner on a 68 year old French patient in Strassbourg, France, through a robotic device there. France Telecom provided the highest quality, private high-speed ATM network. Following the success of “Lindbergh”, Dr. Mehran Anvari (the world-renown surgeon) operated from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and guided Dr. Craig McKinley in his operating room in North Bay, 340 km away in the North of Ontario, performing a surgical procedure with the help of high-speed lines provided by Bell Canada. These tele-robotic surgical operations demonstrate the need of providing expert health service in an emergency in a remote region of a country, and the power of telecommunication networks that carry both the video for patient observation and robotic control signals.

Marco Ajmone Marsan holds a double appointment as Research Professor at IMDEA Networks, the Madrid Institute for Advanced Studies in Networks, and Full Professor at the Department of Electronics (Dipartimento di Elettronica) of the Politecnico di Torino (Polytechnic University of Turin) (Italy). He is also Director of the IEIIT-CNR (Institute for Electronics, Information and Telecommunication Engineering of the National Research Council of Italy) and Vice-Rector for Research, Innovation and Technology Transfer at Politecnico di Torino. In addition to this, he is the Italian Delegate to the ICT Committee of the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission, the chairman of the Italian group of telecommunications professors, and the founder and leader of the Telecommunication Networks Group, one of the top research groups in networking in Europe, based at the Politecnico di Torino.

Thanks to the appointment of Dr Georganas who will tutor doctorates at UC3M Dr Nicolas Georganas has been appointed as visiting researcher at the Madrid Institute of Advanced Network Studies (IMDEA Networks), during the current academic year, as a Cátedra de Excelencia at Madrid's Carlos III University (UC3M). He is a pioneer in information and networking technology research, as well as an expert in interactive multimedia communications at the Ottowa School of Information Technology and Engineering, Canada.

The 4th ACM International Conference on Emerging Networking Experiments and Technologies is an important forum that aims to open up informative and stimulating debates on new network technologies that will shape future Internetworking.