Nick Feamster
Nick Feamster is an American computer scientist and the Neubauer Professor of Computer Science at the University of Chicago, where he was the inaugural director of the Center for Data and Computing, later the Data Science Institute, and co-directs the Internet Innovation Initiative, which focuses on AI's impact on policy and economics. He is known for significant contributions to software-defined networking (SDN), early work in applying machine learning to network security and performance, broadband Internet measurement, Internet technology policy, and online education.
Early life and education
Feamster grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, showing an early interest in technology through participation in Stanford's Education Program for Gifted Youth, one of the first online education initiatives, where he completed AP calculus and physics in middle school.
He earned his S.B. (2000) and M.Eng. (2001) in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and his Ph.D. (2005) in Computer Science, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His doctoral dissertation, Proactive Techniques for Correct and Predictable Internet Routing, received honorable mention for the George M. Sprowls Award. His doctoral advisor was Hari Balakrishnan.
Career
Industry work
Feamster was an early software engineer at LookSmart, where he developed the company's first web crawler, later acquired by AltaVista. He contributed to network security at Damballa, co-inventing botnet-detection technology covered by patents. He co-founded NetMicroscope, a company applying AI to network service management. He also worked on video transcoding at Hewlett-Packard, voice-over-IP technologies at Bell Laboratories, DNS technology at Verisign, and network management and fault diagnosis at Thomson.
In 2019, his research supported a Wall Street Journal investigation into Internet speed and streaming video quality.
Academic positions
Since 2019, Feamster has been Neubauer Professor of Computer Science at the University of Chicago, directing the Network Operations and Internet Security Lab and co-directing the Internet Innovation Initiative. After a 2005 postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University, he joined the Georgia Institute of Technology as an assistant professor, becoming full professor in 2014. In 2015, he returned to Princeton as Professor of Computer Science, having served as Director of the Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP).
Personal life
Feamster is an avid long-distance runner, having completed over 20 marathons, including Boston and New York, and earning three silver medals at the Comrades Marathon. He holds the fastest known time for an unsupported end-to-end run on the Chicago Lakefront Trail. He serves on the official pace team for the Chicago Marathon. He is also a musician who writes, produces, and performs his own tracks.
Research and contributions
Software-defined networking
Feamster is noted for significant contributions to SDN, with influential papers including The Case for Separating Routing from Routers (2004) and The Road to SDN (2014). His Router Configuration Checker (rcc) won the Best Paper Award at USENIX NSDI 2005 and laid the foundation for formal verification of network configurations. He teaches SDN through a Coursera course.
Internet measurement
Feamster's work on broadband Internet measurement includes the BISmark project, the world's first open-source router-based Internet speed test, deployed in over 30 countries. BISmark informed the FCC's Measuring Broadband America initiative and was extended through projects like PEERING and Transit Portal.
Machine learning for networking
Feamster made early contributions to applying machine learning to networking, including spam and botnet detection. His WISE system, developed with students, was deployed at Google for network scenario evaluation. Recent work includes NetDiffusion and NetSSM, applying generative AI to network management.
Network security
Feamster's security contributions include machine learning-based spam and botnet detection, covered by patents. He co-invented Oblivious DNS, deployed by Apple and Cloudflare to enhance privacy.
Online education
Feamster co-authored the textbook Computer Networks with Andrew Tanenbaum. He created one of the first MOOCs, which focused on SDN, for Coursera in 2013. He was one of four founding instructors for Georgia Tech's Online Master of Science in Computer Science (OMSCS) program, teaching computer networking, with course videos available on YouTube.
Technology policy
Feamster is an active contributor to Internet policy, having served as Princeton's CITP director and testifying before the FCC on broadband and net neutrality. He co-edited reports for the Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group (BITAG) and advocated for ethics in computer science education.
Internet censorship and online speech
Feamster's early work on Infranet (2002) addressed Internet censorship circumvention. He founded the Workshop on Free and Open Communication on the Internet (FOCI) in 2011. He also teaches a course on censorship and online speech.
Legal technical expert
Feamster has served as a technical expert witness in litigation for many cases, and has testified in federal court on many cases involving a variety of issues, including copyright, patents, trade secrets, and other issues relating to security and privacy, including Sony Music Entertainment v. Cox Communications (2019) and Splunk Inc. v. Cribl, Inc. (2021).
Awards and honors
- PECASE for cybersecurity contributions (2007)
- ACM Fellow (2016)
- ACM SIGCOMM Rising Star Award (2010)
- Technology Review TR35 Innovator Under 35 (2010)
- Sloan Research Fellowship (2009)
- NSF CAREER Award (2007)
- Best Paper Award, ACM SIGCOMM (2006) for network-level behavior of spammers
- USENIX NSDI Test of Time Award (2015) for SDN contributions
- ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference Test of Time Award (2025) for PEERING and Transit Portal