Jarkko Oikarinen

Who is Jarkko Oikarinen?

Jarkko Oikarinen is the inventor of the first Internet chat network, called Internet Relay Chat, where he is known as WiZ.

While working at the University of Oulu in August 1988, he wrote the first IRC server and client programs, which he produced to replace the MUT program on the Finnish BBS OuluBox. Using the Bitnet Relay chat system as inspiration, Oikarinen continued to develop IRC over the next four years, receiving assistance from Darren Reed in co-authoring the IRC Protocol. In 1997, his development of IRC earned Oikarinen a Dvorak Award for Personal Achievement—Outstanding Global Interactive Personal Communications System; in 2005, the Millennium Technology Prize Foundation, a Finnish public-private partnership, honored him with one of three Special Recognition Awards.

Having received his Ph.D. from the University of Oulu in 1999, in areas of computer graphics and medical imaging, his efforts in the latter field focused on telemedicine, volume rendering, signal processing and computed axial tomography. He is also partner and chief software architect at an electronic games developer called Numeric Garden.