SDSC's KC Claffy receives annual IEEE Internet Award

kc claffy, the principal investigator and co-founder of the Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) based at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, has been awarded the latest IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Internet Award.

claffy was recognized by the IEEE for her "seminal contributions to the field of Internet measurement, including security and network data analysis, and for distinguished leadership in and service to the Internet community by providing open-access data and tools," according to a notice published by the institute.

Also receiving the latest IEEE Internet award was Vern Paxson, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley.

"kc is a real pioneer in Internet-measurement science," said SDSC Director Michael Norman. "I am very proud that her work has been recognized by the IEEE, and that she calls SDSC her home. We're also delighted that kc is joined in receiving this prestigious award by UC Berkeley's Professor Paxson, making this a notable accomplishment for the entire University of California system."

CAIDA was formed in 1997 and is now one of several 'Centers of Excellence' based at SDSC, an Organized Research Unit of UC San Diego. CAIDA seeks, through the collection and curation of strategic Internet data sets and freely available tools and analysis methodologies, to improve the scientific integrity of network research and to promote more informed engineering, business, and policy decisions regarding the Internet infrastructure.

CAIDA's research projects span Internet topology, routing, traffic, security and stability, future Internet architecture, economics, and policy. Its infrastructure activities, mostly funded by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Homeland Security, support a wide range of measurement-based Internet studies around the world, with focus on the health and integrity of the global Internet ecosystem. CAIDA collects and shares the largest Internet topology data sets (IPv4 and IPv6) available to academic researchers, along with heavily curated data sets to support different research needs, including a ranking of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) based on inferred business relationships between them. CAIDA's emphasis on data collection, curation, dissemination, and open source software tools to support analysis of the data, is unique in the field, driven by kc's long-standing interest in establishing and empirically grounding a discipline of Internet science.

"kc was a Ph.D. student here and, unable to escape the gravity of San Diego, created a completely independent research group, CAIDA, that single-handedly established UC San Diego as a worldwide leader in network measurement," said Stefan Savage, a professor in UC San Diego's Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE). "We're lucky to have her as a colleague, an adjunct in CSE, and as a member of the Center for Networked Systems."

"I am honored to receive such gracious recognition from the IEEE, and also honored to have such a fantastic team of people at CAIDA who dedicate so much effort to advancing our understanding of what I consider the greatest artifact of the field of computer science," said claffy.

Provided by University of California - San Diego