Jonathan M. Smith, the Olga and Alberico Pompa Professor of Computer and Information Science, will be joining us for an informal conversation -- with dinner in the Junior Balcony tent, if the weather permits.

A world-renowned expert in computer networking, Jonathan has recently returned from a couple of years as a program manager at DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), where he managed eight amazing projects.

He created the Open, Programmable, Secure 5G OPS-4G) program to develop a portable standards-compliant network stack of 5G mobile that is open source, secure by design, and tailorable to the mission. The OPS-5G program aims to move the mobile wireless market off its current model of opaque, proprietary, and vertically-integrated technology provided by a small number of dominant vendors to a more robust model of transparent, open source technology created by a diverse ecosystem of academic and commercial software and hardware developers.

He created the Fast Network INterface Cards (FastNICs) program to develop new networking technologies to accelerate the computation of distributed applications, such as speeding up distributed image analysis and training of machine learning classifiers by 100-fold.

He created the Searchlight program to develop technologies to ensure that quality-of-service guarantees are met for distributed applications operating across the internet.

He also assumed the program manager role and successfully transitioned three on-going programs: Distributed Computing (DCOMP), Edge-Directed Cyber Technologies for Reliable Mission Communication (EdgeCT) and Extreme DDoS Defense (XD3).

Finally, he created and initiated two Super-Seedling efforts, Pronto and Guessing Random Additive Noise Decoding (GRAND).

So join us at 6:00 on Wednesday 10/6 to learn about the future of digital networks!