New ICSI Vice President, Head of Networking and Security Research

At the end of 2021, Prof. Vern Paxon made the big move to take early retirement from the UC Berkeley faculty and stepped down as ICSI Vice President and Director of the Networking Research Group in order to devote his full time to Corelight, the startup he, Dr. Robin Sommers, and colleagues spun out of ICSI several years ago. Prof. Paxson will continue to serve on ICSI's Scientific Council, and is now a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute. 

 

Prof. Paxson commented, "My time at ICSI goes back to my grad student days, and then to more than two decades with the ICSI Networking Group, which over time became Networking and Security as our research interests evolved. That time has spanned an amazing set of people, both within the group and more broadly at ICSI, and some deeply rewarding research efforts."

 

Paxson continued, "We founded Corelight  in 2013 as a means of keeping one of those efforts alive, the open-source Zeek project. It took quite a while to find a business model that could provide any sort of significant revenue stream for the project, and then once we finally did … WOW, the market exploded with interest. It’s amazing being part of Corelight’s growth, and exhilarating (and daunting!) stepping up to tackle the many possibilities and challenges that lie ahead. Having at the company’s core a technology that we’ve nurtured over my entire time at ICSI makes it all the more satisfying — an opportunity I find I simply have to embrace."

 

"We are thrilled to see that the research Vern and his colleagues conducted at ICSI will have such a big impact through Corelight and the Zeek community," said Dr. Lea Shanley, ICSI Executive Director. “Although his role is changing, Vern will continue to be an important part of the ICSI community.”

 

Prof. Mark Allman has been selected as the new director of ICSI's Networking Research group. In addition to his role at ICSI, Allman is an adjunct professor in EECS at Case Western Reserve University.  His current research is in the areas of network measurement, security, transport protocols, congestion control and network architecture. He serves on ICSI's Scientific Council, Technical Advisory Committee, and Recruitment committee. Learn more about his research here.

 

In December, the ICSI Board elected Prof. Michael Mahoney as ICSI's new Vice President. "I am honored to have the opportunity to serve in this role, and I look forward to working with Lea Shanley and others as ICSI carves out new directions going forward," said Prof. Mahoney.

 

Prof. Mahoney directs ICSI's Big Data research group, focusing on algorithmic and statistical aspects of modern large-scale data analysis. Learn more about his research interests here. He is also an Associate Adjunct Professor at the University of California at Berkeley in the Department of Statistics. In addition, Mahoney is an Amazon Scholar and the head of the Machine Learning and Analytics Group at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He serves on ICSI's Scientific Council, and Chairs the ICSI Recruitment committee.

 

"I am delighted to have Allman and Mahoney as key collaborators. Their strategic foresight and commitment to research excellence and broadening participation in computing will be a tremendous asset as we seek to increase our impact for social good," said Shanley.