W3CStatements about TAG Nominees for 2021 Election

Form for AC to vote | TAG home

This is the list of nominees for the 2021 election to the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG). Each person has been nominated by at least one W3C Member according to the TAG election process.

The W3C Membership elects the TAG. For this election W3C will fill three seats. W3C will announce the results on 21 December 2021.

Note: The deadline for votes is 04:59 UTC on 2021-12-15 (23:59, Boston time on 2021-12-14).

The following statements were sent about the nominees (in alphabetical order by nominee family name):

  1. Rossen Atanassov (Microsoft Corporation)* 
  2. Kenneth Rohde Christiansen (Intel Corporation)*
  3. Dapeng (Max) Liu (Alibaba Group)
  4. Sangwhan Moon (Google)*

An asterisk (*) indicates that the nominee is a current participant. All individuals were nominated by the AC Representatives of their organizations unless otherwise indicated below.

Rossen Atanassov (Microsoft Corporation)*

Hi, I am Rossen, a Software Engineer working on browsers and security at Microsoft. Over the past fifteen years I've been contributing to the success of the Web as an engineer and standards advocate. Two years ago, I was honored by the AC with an elected seat on the TAG. Today, I am running for reelection because I'm confident that my experience in collaborating with feature designers will continue to be a valuable addition to this group and the Web.

Many of you know and recognize me for my work on CSS, Houdini API, SVG, Accessibility and Internationalization across W3C and the Chromium community. During my first term on the TAG, I helped bring together browser implementers and TAG members to improve the process of evaluating the ever-increasing number of design review requests. As a result, the TAG formalized a process for early, idea-time reviews that help guide next steps in the design phase, helping to reduce the incidence of "late" review requests. Collaborating with fellow TAG members, I helped guide many design reviews and shape the design principles guidelines.

Over the past two years, communities around the globe have changed the way they live, work, learn, communicate, shop, and take care of their health. Many of these changes were made possible by the readiness and abilities of the Web platform. Over one billion students started learning through technologies built on top of the Web while educators and others worked from home. While this was a success story, the rise of online security exploits and social engineering threats left many in despair. We must improve Trust in the Web and continue to expand its ability to enable everyone, everywhere. Given this, I have spent the past two years working on Web Defense Services at Microsoft aiming to improve customer Trust in the Web. This work deepened my appreciation for the complexity of threats on the Web and solidified my belief that the best solutions come from industry and standards working together. This is my priority as a human, engineer, standards advocate, and elected member of the TAG.

We must champion the Web to improve productivity and collaboration for everyone, everywhere. Safely enriching the platform will help to cement the Web's future as the primary app platform. Great examples of initiatives across W3C communities that can benefit from TAG involvement include Open UI, Project Fugu, mini-app, and more. Re-elected to the TAG, I will have the unique position to improve the quality of such designs, ensure trust and safety concerns are aired and addressed, increase visibility and collaboration across similar efforts and help guide cohesive design principles across all of them.

The TAG must continue to be the steward of technical solutions across the W3C. I believe I have the vision, skills, and determination to continue helping the TAG meet today's challenges. If re-elected I am eager to continue working toward:

Kenneth Rohde Christiansen (Intel Corporation)*

Intel Corporation is pleased to nominate Kenneth Rohde Christiansen for a third term on the Technical Architecture Group (TAG).

Kenneth is a Senior Staff Engineer and architect on Intel’s Web Platform Engineering team, and a key contributor to Intel’s web strategy and involvement in the W3C and the Chromium open-source project. He is a Google Developer Expert and Microsoft MVP, frequently presenting at events and meetups on web development topics.

The continued evolution of the web and the growing diversity of membership in the W3C have presented complex and challenging issues to the TAG. Among them are security, privacy and sustainability related problems. In addition, new technologies related to the decentralization of the web have generated debates within the membership ranks. Now, more than ever, elected TAG members have to bring a thoughtful and holistic approach to helping the organization navigate through these debates.

Kenneth’s extensive and long work experience in many areas including OS engineering, internet of things, hardware design, application development, web browsers and standards has given him a deep knowledge of hardware and software stacks. This, combined with his experience with the developer environment enable Kenneth to bring a much needed objective and balanced perspective to TAG. His contribution on TAG has and will continue to ensure that the W3C and the web continue to evolve and flourish as a development platform for the future.

As part of the TAG, Kenneth has used his extensive experience to help extend and expand the reach of the web by adding new features and capabilities in a secure and privacy-preserving manner, and improved many specifications and proposals with countless reviews and good collaboration among other TAG members. For example, his deep knowledge on Progressive Web Apps and Project Fugu allowed him to help the TAG review contributions and to align them with the broader web platform and W3C standards. In addition, Kenneth also improved collaboration with members of TC39, which resulted in the TC39 sending some of their newer JavaScript features for TAG review.

Intel is proud to nominate our esteemed colleague, Kenneth Rohde Christensen to the W3C and the web community to continue serving on the TAG. For this nomination, Kenneth has the strong and broad support of Intel web technical leads and management. We hope that his talents and passion will be utilized for the benefit of the web ecosystem. Thank you for your consideration.

Dapeng (Max) Liu (Alibaba Group)

Alibaba Group is pleased to nominate Dapeng (Max) Liu for the TAG.

Dapeng (Max) Liu focus on the technical Standard Activities as the Technical Director in Alibaba Group. Dapeng (Max) Liu has more than 15 years of professional standardization work experience and have a strong technical background in IoT related areas and he also has considerable expertise in the fields of Web (Including Web Payment, Mini App, Web of Things, Web&Network etc.), Internet protocols, cloud and 5G etc. Max has served as leadership positions in a number of international standardization organizations, such as co-chair of W3C Web Commerce IG, co-chair of IETF DMM working group, vice-chair of automation working group and chair of smart home subgroup of Bluetooth SIG, etc.

Dapeng (Max) Liu has been involved in W3C standardization since 2015. He joined the efforts to standardize Web payment method manifest in the Web Payment Working Group of W3C and this effort helped to expand the W3C web payment standards to native apps such as Alipay. He then served as the co-chair of W3C Web Commerce IG in 2017 and helps to incubate Web Payment and Web Commerce related standards. He also joints the efforts to incubate Mini Apps standard in W3C.

Dapeng (Max) Liu is currently leading the client-edge-cloud coordination work in the W3C Web&Networks IG and the goal is to leverage W3C web standards and incubate news standard technologies in the field of edge cloud computing.

Currently, web technology and standards are expanding its usage to many different verticals, such as IoT, payment, cloud computing and many others. If joining the TAG, Dapeng (Max) Liu will leverage his strong technical standardization background and experience in various vertical areas to help to achieve the goal “Web on Everything”.

Dapeng (Max) Liu has Alibaba’s support from all necessary aspects to accomplish the duties and responsibilities in this area. We appreciate your support in the coming TAG election.

Sangwhan Moon (Google)*

Google is pleased to nominate Sangwhan Moon to the TAG.

Our nomination of Sangwhan is unlike our past nominations, with a special commitment to the web platform. Google is a large company with many products and platforms, of which Chromium (Chrome) is one pillar. Sangwhan, unlike our past nominated candidates, is not part of that organization. Sangwhan’s past track record in the TAG has been extremely helpful, and the Chrome team has appreciated his role in the past providing crucial neutrality and diversity within the TAG.

Sangwhan has served in the TAG for the last five years, where he has contributed his diverse skill set for many domain-specific design reviews, such as media, machine learning, hardware integration, and other powerful APIs. His track record in these areas has been recognized widely during his past two tenures on the TAG. Without Sangwhan’s continued contributions in these fast-growing areas the TAG would be limited in its ability to guide its membership on how to extend the web platform with new capabilities in a cohesive, future-proof, and architecturally sound manner.

Sangwhan’s connection with the Asian membership in the W3C has also allowed him to bring the technical requirements from the Asian companies into consideration when designing the web platform for global use. The Asian perspective would be sorely missed from the TAG without Sangwhan's presence.

The TAG’s Design Reviews are the most visible and impactful day-to-day contributions of the TAG toward the W3C membership. Sangwhan’s deep expertise in the above-mentioned verticals combined with his thorough understanding of the web architecture has enabled him to excel at specification reviews helping the TAG fulfill its core mission and resolve complex and multifaceted architectural issues in a timely manner. His contributions and expertise in the emerging and growing important areas of machine learning and hardware connectivity will be particularly valuable given the expertise in these areas on the TAG is in short supply.

In addition to being well versed in multiple vertical technical domains, Sangwhan is also experienced with the horizontal domains and their specific requirements. As the editor of the Web Platform Design Principles that outlines a set of design principles guiding the design of web platform technologies, Sangwhan demonstrated his deep expertise in both API design and understanding of the Web architecture. If elected to the TAG for another term, Sangwhan plans to make a self-assessment accessibility checklist a part of the mandated review process, similar to how security and privacy self-assessment is done.

While working on Opera TV, Sangwhan implemented the accessibility infrastructure for the browser product. He has become well versed in internationalization issues related to the Web having first-hand experience as a Korean living in multiple Asian countries developing a browser and other products for the global audience.

Given his tremendous skills and contributions in the TAG, Google asks the W3C membership to support Sangwhan in the coming TAG election so that the community can continue to benefit from his contributions.


Xueyuan Jia, W3C Marketing & Communications