[Colloq] Distinguished Lecture Series

[Chantal Cardona]

*College** of **Computer** and Information Science*

*Distinguished Lecture Series on Grand Challenges in Computing*

 

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

12:00 Noon

108 West Village H

 

*"The Challenges of Delivering Content and Applications on the Internet"*

* *

Tom Leighton

Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Akamai

 

Bio

*TOM LEIGHTON* co-founded Akamai Technologies in September 1998. Serving 
as Chief Scientist, Dr. Leighton is Akamai's technology visionary as 
well as a key member of the Executive Committee setting the company's 
direction.
As one of the world's preeminent authorities on algorithms for network 
applications, Dr. Leighton's work behind establishing Akamai was based 
on recognizing that a solution to freeing up Web congestion could be 
found in applied mathematics and algorithms. Akamai has demonstrated 
this through the creation of the world's largest distributed computing 
platform that dynamically routes content and applications across a 
network of over 15,000 servers. Dr. Leighton's technology achievements 
at Akamai earned him recognition as one of the Top 10 Technology 
Innovators in U.S. News & World Report.
A Professor of Applied Mathematics at MIT, he has served as the Head of 
the Algorithms Group in MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science since its 
inception in 1996.
Dr. Leighton holds numerous patents involving cryptography, digital 
rights management, and algorithms for networks. During the course of his 
career, he has served on dozens of government, industrial and academic 
review committees; program committees; and editorial boards. He is a 
former two-term chair of the 2,000-member Association of Computing 
Machinery Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Complexity Theory, 
and a former two-term editor-in-chief of the Journal of the ACM, the 
nation's premier journal for computer science research. Dr. Leighton is 
a Fellow for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was 
appointed in 2003 as a member of the President's Information Technology 
Advisory Committee (PITAC). In 2004 he was elected into the National 
Academy of Engineering for contributions to the design of networks and 
circuits and for technology for Web content delivery.





Sponsored by the College of Computer and Information Science