Director's Greeting

Vahdat

The last decade has been witness to exponential growth in the speed and coverage of digital communication networks. We are now at an inflection point in the utility of the now global communication network. Moving forward, the reach of the network will enable a new class of applications and opportunities to collaborate and communicate. With these opportunities come a number of challenges. As networked applications and services permeate our daily experience, we will require new techniques to improve the security of our data and to manage scale and complexity of the millions of compute and communication elements powering the global network.

At UCSD's Center for Networked Systems (CNS), we have assembled a world-class team of faculty and students, performing cutting-edge research in all areas of computer networks, from optical interconnects and wireless sensor networks to data center architectures and network security. Our faculty are internationally recognized leaders with a reputation for working on practical, highimpact problems, while simultaneously performing fundamental research to advance the state of the art. Our students are highly sought after, regularly securing top industrial and academic positions.

A significant differentiator at CNS is our culture of industrial partnership. By working closely with our member companies to define research efforts of mutual interest, we are able to engage the top companies in our field to both understand the important problems facing real deployed communication systems and to jointly work toward solutions.

Our students typically enjoy the opportunity to either begin or continue collaborative research as a part of our very successful summer internship program. On a number of occasions, summer internships have led to dissertation topics and even impacted company practices or products. We believe the revolution in communication networks is just beginning. With the strength of our students, our faculty, and our deep collaborations with our industrial partners, UCSD's Center for Networked Systems will continue to be at the forefront of these exciting times.