David Wetherall
Director, Intel Research Seattle
As the new Director of Intel's Seattle lab, I'm excited about the opportunity to increase the impact of my area of research. My expertise is in networking, and in particular, the protocols that underlie the Internet and all other forms of communications networks. These protocols make the network function by, for instance, finding paths to move information reliably across the network.
My early research focused on the Internet, but over the past two years I've become increasingly interested in wireless networks. Wireless devices are proliferating, due to their tremendous convenience and the fact that the technology is racing ahead in terms of capabilities. My interest in wireless systems meshes well with the lab's agenda of exploring technologies to support ubiquitous computing. As lab director, I'll be able to continue my research into protocols for wireless systems, and to do so with real applications that matter to real people. That's very rewarding, and it adds significant realism to the research.
One of my research objectives for the lab is to build a better foundation for ubiquitous wireless systems, in the form of new networking protocols that enable communication and connectivity between wireless devices. Wireless networks don't yet provide the levels of simplicity, predictable service, and safety which, frankly, I think we should demand of them. I'm interested in exploring new protocols for ease of use, predictability and safety, so that developers can build applications on the network without having to worry about performance or security issues.
One focus of this research going forward will be designing protocols that allow users to control how their personal information is shared when they're using wireless networks. Today users of wireless networks leak personal information just by virtue of using the networks. Encryption is commonly used to protect the contents of conversations, but some amount of personal information still is shared with other people. Depending on the network configuration, in many cases it's easy for third parties to track wireless users and learn their identities, where they go throughout the day, and potentially what they're doing, such as making VOIP calls or visiting specific Web sites.
Most people probably don't care about the fact that much of their private information is being broadcast, until they become victims of identity theft or experience some other blatant invasion of privacy. We want to address this problem earlier rather than later, by creating protocols that limit the extent to which third parties can build profiles of users without their explicit permission. It's a difficult but worthwhile challenge.
Having the resources of Intel behind our lab enables us to address such challenges, and it's another reason I was excited about the opportunity to take on this position. Our lab is relatively small, but the resources of Intel, and our close collaboration with University of Washington researchers, enable us to tackle big research problems. And our connection to Intel gives us access, not only to new technologies, particularly in the area of wireless, but a transfer path for whatever research we develop. That gives us a much better chance to make an impact on the world.
David Wetherall joined Intel Corporation as the Director of Intel Research Seattle in July 2006, taking a partial leave of absence from his position as an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. Wetherall joined the UW faculty in 1999 after receiving his Ph.D. in computer science from MIT. His thesis research pioneered the concept of active networks, an architecture in which new network services can be introduced rapidly using mobile code. His research interests range from networking to distributed systems and programming languages. Wetherall received an NSF CAREER award in 2002 and became a Sloan Fellow in 2004.
