Nick Feamster, an assistant professor in the School of Computer Science and leader of the Network Operations and Internet Security lab, was named one of the world’s top innovators under age 35 by Technology Review magazine. Feamster, who received undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees from MIT before coming to Tech, was selected for the prestigious award because of his cutting-edge work on computer networks. He previously received a Sloan fellowship and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. He works in the Klaus Advanced Computing Building with a window looking out onto Russ Chandler Stadium.
Baseball: I’m a Red Sox fan. I was there in 2004 [when Boston won the World Series].
View of the field: You cannot quite see home plate. It’s enough to see what’s going on and if it’s worth going down to watch. It’s a trade-off, though. It gets pretty noisy in the spring.
Relocating south: Atlanta feels like a Northern city. I enjoy being able to bike to work.
Accent: I’m from the San Francisco Bay area. I get accused of being from the Northeast a lot, probably from talking too fast.
Innovator award: I was totally excited of course. It definitely was a nice surprise. It’s also good recognition for the students. They did a lot of the hard work.
Networks as a career path: I discovered networking through my studies almost by accident. It was never an inherent passion; I almost stumbled into it. I was working in video streaming, and it always fascinated me that you could write a program and something would go from one device and almost magically appear somewhere else. My adviser at MIT really got me excited about the area, and I strive to do the same for other students.
Messiness of the Internet: One of the most complex systems on Earth is the human body; another is the Internet. Biologists say the human body is amazing that it works at all, and the Internet is the same way. There are a lot of things it doesn’t do well. When things go wrong, it’s utter mayhem. It’s like with a car. You have to take it to the mechanic because you have no idea what’s under the hood. With the Internet, when things go wrong the average user can’t troubleshoot very easily.
Network threats: One of the biggest areas where threats emerge is from homes. Attackers like platforms that are well connected. Homes are increasingly connected, which brings about many challenges because home owners are not skilled network administrators.
Routers as safeguards: Network devices are becoming almost like personal computers that can run software. That offers an interesting point of control. Every home has a router, so there’s some hope to make them smarter.
Teaching home owners: We need to give the average user more visibility. What do you do when vulnerability is detected? If we can turn the router into a flexible device, we can use it to solve problems. It’s a big challenge and opportunity.
Research at Tech: One of the things I like is being able to do hands-on work with real networks. The Office of Information Technology is very supportive. Its network is like a test bed. I think that’s very unique. It makes it a fun place to work.
Old computer: That’s a recent conversion. That’s my old machine. It’s not fully decommissioned. I used to be a full Ubuntu/Linux guy.
New Apple: Productivity is soaring now. When you get busy, it’s nice for things to just work.
Teaching: The undergraduates are quite strong. When I was teaching the undergraduate networking class, I felt like many of the students could stand up and give lectures.
Network excitement: There can be a tendency to view networking as a boring, textbook topic. It’s so much more. Computer science is at the center of everything we do, and I feel like networking is the same way. It’s really about how we communicate and designing ways to do so efficiently and effectively.
Problems to overcome: There are a lot of interesting challenges in policy, economics and human-computer interactions. Networking touches a lot of other fields. It’s a good field for people who want to know about a lot of other things.
Future questions: What’s going to happen when the next billion people come online? It’s hard to predict what the Internet will look like. Countries without skilled administrators are going to come online.
Hobbies: I like to cycle. I like to run. I’ve run in the Atlanta half marathon for many years in a row.
Squash racket: I like to play squash. It’s been a while, though. It’s hard to find people who play in the South. I started playing in grad school. It was a thesis procrastination technique.
Video games: I’m not [a gamer]. I think I played Pong. I like Tetris. My students definitely play games. We have a nice network. They need to take advantage of that.
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