Dr. Hari Balakrishnan Dr. Hari Balakrishnan is currently a Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) at MIT, where he leads the Networks and Mobile Systems research group. He is a leading expert in the area of networked computer systems. Balakrishnan is known for several contributions, including in overlay and peer-to-peer networks, wireless and sensor networks, distributed data management and stream processing, network security, and network architecture. He has published over 90 research papers, authored several Internet RFCs, and produced several widely used research systems. These include the commercially available Cricket indoor location system, the RON and MONET overlay networks, and the Chord protocol. His industrial contributions include the design of the patented algorithms at the heart of the high-speed packet processing chips at Sandburst (acquired by Broadcom in 2005). Balakrishnan received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1998 and a B. Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology (Madras) in 1993. His PhD thesis on wireless networks won the 1998 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for best thesis in computer science. His honors include an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2002), an NSF CAREER Award (2000), and seven award-winning papers at various top conferences and journals, including the IEEE Communication Society's William R. Bennett Prize (2004). He was awarded the Spira (2001) and Junior Bose (2002) awards for teaching excellence from the MIT School of Engineering, and MIT's prestigious Edgerton faculty achievement award for distinction in research and teaching (2003).