Scott Shenker

Scott Shenker spent his academic youth studying theoretical physics, first at Brown University as an undergraduate, then at the University of Chicago as a graduate student, and finally at Cornell University as a postdoctoral researcher where his research focused on the transition to chaos in dynamical systems. He gave up chaos theory for computer science soon after joining the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in 1984 and since then has displayed a remarkably short attention span, with his research in the ensuing years wandering from networking and Internet architecture to performance modeling to distributed systems to game theory and economics. Unable to focus on any single topic, his current research includes projects in networking, system design, privacy mechanisms, and technology ecosystem transformation. However, despite all these distractions and decades of therapy, he has never overcome his obsession with Internet architecture, which has remained central to his research over the past three decades. Unable to hold a steady job, he currently splits his time between the International Computer Science Institute (which he joined in 1998) and the UC Berkeley Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences Department (which he joined in 2002). He is indebted to his many collaborators for inspiring him intellectually while patiently enduring his terrible sense of humor and his tyrannical approach to collaborative writing.