Brief Bio

Michael J. Freedman is the Robert E. Kahn Professor in the Computer Science Department at Princeton University, as well as the co-founder and CTO of Timescale, building a category-defining relational database and cloud platform for time-series data. His work broadly focuses on distributed systems, networking, and security, and has led to commercial products and deployed systems reaching millions of users daily. Honors include ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award, ACM SIGOPS Mark Weiser Award, ACM Fellow, Presidential Early Career Award (PECASE), Sloan Fellow, and DARPA CSSG Member.

Bio

Michael J. Freedman is the Robert E. Kahn Professor in the Computer Science Department at Princeton University. He is also the co-founder and CTO of Timescale, building a category-defining relational database and cloud platform for time-series data, which has raised more than $180 million from top VC investors (NEA, Benchmark, Redpoint, Tiger Global, and others). His work broadly focuses on distributed systems, networking, and security.

Freedman developed CoralCDN (a decentralized content distribution network serving millions of daily users) and Ethane (which formed the basis for the OpenFlow / software-defined networking architecture). He co-founded Illuminics Systems around IP geolocation and intelligence, which was acquired by Quova (now part of Neustar). Freedman is also a technical advisor to Blockstack, building a more decentralized Internet leveraging the blockchain.

Honors include the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award, ACM SIGOPS Mark Weiser Award, ACM Fellow, Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE, given by President Obama), SIGCOMM, ICFP, and TCC Test of Time Awards, Caspar Bowden Award for Privacy Enhancing Technologies, Sloan Fellowship, NSF CAREER Award, Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, DARPA Computer Science Study Group membership, and multiple award publications. Prior to joining Princeton in 2007, he received his Ph.D. in computer science from NYU's Courant Institute and his S.B. and M.Eng. degrees from MIT.

Longer Bio

Michael J. Freedman is the Robert E. Kahn Professor in the Computer Science Department at Princeton University. He is also the co-founder and CTO of Timescale, building a category-defining relational database and cloud platform for time-series data, which has raised more than $180 million from top VC investors (NEA, Benchmark, Redpoint, Tiger Global, and others). His work broadly focuses on distributed systems, networking, and security. Prior to joining Princeton in 2007, he received his Ph.D. in computer science from NYU's Courant Institute and his S.B. and M.Eng. degrees from MIT.

Freedman developed and operated several self-managing systems, including CoralCDN, a decentralized content distribution network that served millions of users daily from 2004 -- 2015. Other research has included software-defined networking, service-centric networking and next-generation end-host stacks, cloud storage and data management, untrusted cloud services, fault-tolerant distributed systems, virtual world systems, peer-to-peer systems, and various privacy-enhancing, anti-censorship, and anti-spam systems.

During a two-year research appointment at Stanford, Michael's work on IP geolocation and intelligence led him to co-found Illuminics Systems, which was acquired by Quova (now part of Neustar) in 2006. His work on programmable enterprise networking (Ethane) helped form the basis for the OpenFlow/SDN architecture being standardized by the Open Networking Foundation. His work on locality/load-based server selection (DONAR) provided name resolution for services on the Measurement Lab testbed from 2009-2013, including those powering the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s Consumer Broadband Test. Freedman is also a technical advisor to Blockstack, building a more decentralized Internet leveraging the blockchain.

Honors include the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award, ACM SIGOPS Mark Weiser Award, ACM Fellow, Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE, nominated by the National Science Foundation and given by President Obama), Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, NSF CAREER Award, Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, DARPA Computer Science Study Group membership, SIGCOMM, ICFP, and TCC Test of Time Awards, Caspar Bowden Award for Privacy Enhancing Technologies, and multiple award publications at SIGCOMM, USENIX Security, USENIX ATC, Eurocrypt, CCS, and LADIS. He has served as the technical program chair of SoCC, and on the technical committees for SOSP, OSDI, SIGCOMM, NSDI, IEEE Security, CCS, HotOS, USENIX, and other top conferences. His research is funded by the National Science Foundation, DARPA, Office of Naval Research, GENI Project Office, Sloan Foundation, Princeton's Grand Challenges Program, Cisco Systems, Intel, and Google.