Born 1957, in Mississippi USA. Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering from Colorado State University in 1980. PhD in Computer Science from University College London in 1994. Have held research positions in several industry research labs, including MITRE (1984-1990, Virginia), Bellcore (1990-1994, New Jersey), NTT Software Labs (1994-2000, Tokyo), and ACIRI (2000-2001, Berkeley). Held position of Chief Scientist at two Silicon Valley startups (Fast Forward Networks and Tahoe Networks). Associate Professor at Cornell University (2003-2008). Director and Scientific Member of the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (since 2009).