Dr. Karen R Sollins

The general area of Dr. Sollins's research is computer networking, with many years of focus on network support for distributed application. In that arena her work has concentrated on naming, security, and information infrastructure, with a particular focus on the design implications of the need for extreme longevity in such systems. In addition to publishing in these areas, she has worked on protocol design and has been deeply involved in the standards process of the Internet Engineering Task Force, as appropriate to her work. Her research funding sources include DARPA, NSF, Intel, and Cisco.

Her current interests lie in network security and overall network architecture. Two specific examples of these are a current effort to address the problem of phishing in the context of the MIT-based consortium, the Communications Futures Program, and The Knowledge Plane , an effort to bring self-knowledge and self-diagnosis to the overall management of an Internet scaled network. More broadly, and in conjunction with one of her Ph.D. students she is also working on questions about the layering that is one of the core elements of the current design of the Internet.

She supports and works with both undergraduate and graduate students on a regular basis, teaches intermittently, and has been an undergraduate academic advisor for many years. She regularly participates in journal paper reviewing, program committee reviewing, NSF panel reviewing, as well as various other professional service activities. She is a member of the ACM, IEEE, and AAAS.