Biography:Nick Feamster

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Nick Feamster
Nick Feamster portrait
Feamster in 2024
NationalityAmerican
Alma materMassachusetts Institute of Technology (S.B., M.Eng., Ph.D.)
Known forSoftware-defined networking
Network measurement
Machine learning for networking
Internet security
Online computer science education
AwardsACM Fellow
PECASE
ACM SIGCOMM Rising Star Award
Sloan Research Fellowship
Technology Review TR35 Innovators Under 35
Scientific career
FieldsComputer science, Networking
InstitutionsUniversity of Chicago
Princeton University
Georgia Institute of Technology
ThesisProactive Techniques for Correct and Predictable Internet Routing (2005)
Doctoral advisorHari Balakrishnan

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.[1] He is known for significant contributions to software-defined networking (SDN),[2] early work in applying machine learning to network security and performance,[3] broadband Internet measurement,[4] 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.[5][6]

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.[7][8]

Career

Industry work

Feamster was an early software engineer at LookSmart, where he developed the company's first web crawler, later acquired by AltaVista.[1] He contributed to network security at Damballa, co-inventing botnet-detection technology covered by patents.[9] He co-founded NetMicroscope, a company applying AI to network service management.[10][11] 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.[12][13]

In 2019, his research supported a Wall Street Journal investigation into Internet speed and streaming video quality.[14][15]

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.[1][16] 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).[17]

Personal life

File:Nick Feamster Running.png
Nick Feamster running the Comrades Marathon, where he finished as a top-10 American in 2017.
Nick Feamster singing and playing guitar.

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.[1][18][19] He holds the fastest known time for an unsupported end-to-end run on the Chicago Lakefront Trail.[19] He serves on the official pace team for the Chicago Marathon.[20] He is also a musician who writes, produces, and performs his own tracks.[21]

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).[22][23] His Router Configuration Checker (rcc) won the Best Paper Award at USENIX NSDI 2005 and laid the foundation for formal verification of network configurations.[24] He teaches SDN through a Coursera course.[25]

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.[26] BISmark informed the FCC's Measuring Broadband America initiative and was extended through projects like PEERING and Transit Portal.[27][28]

Machine learning for networking

Feamster made early contributions to applying machine learning to networking, including spam and botnet detection.[29] His WISE system, developed with students, was deployed at Google for network scenario evaluation.[30] Recent work includes NetDiffusion and NetSSM, applying generative AI to network management.[31][32]

Network security

Feamster's security contributions include machine learning-based spam and botnet detection, covered by patents.[33][34] He co-invented Oblivious DNS, deployed by Apple and Cloudflare to enhance privacy.[35][36][37]

Online education

Feamster co-authored the textbook Computer Networks with Andrew Tanenbaum.[38] He created one of the first MOOCs, which focused on SDN, for Coursera in 2013.[39] 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.[40][41]

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.[42] He co-edited reports for the Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group (BITAG) and advocated for ethics in computer science education.[43][44]

Internet censorship and online speech

Feamster's early work on Infranet (2002) addressed Internet censorship circumvention.[45] He founded the Workshop on Free and Open Communication on the Internet (FOCI) in 2011.[46] He also teaches a course on censorship and online speech.[47][48]

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).[49][50]

Awards and honors

  • PECASE for cybersecurity contributions (2007)[51]
  • ACM Fellow (2016)[52]
  • ACM SIGCOMM Rising Star Award (2010)[53]
  • Technology Review TR35 Innovator Under 35 (2010)[54]
  • Sloan Research Fellowship (2009)[55]
  • NSF CAREER Award (2007)[56]
  • Best Paper Award, ACM SIGCOMM (2006) for network-level behavior of spammers[57]
  • USENIX NSDI Test of Time Award (2015) for SDN contributions[58]
  • ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference Test of Time Award (2025) for PEERING and Transit Portal[59]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 "Nick Feamster". University of Chicago Department of Computer Science. https://cs.uchicago.edu/people/nick-feamster/. 
  2. ↑ Feamster, Nick; Rexford, Jennifer; Zegura, Ellen (2014). "The Road to SDN". ACM Computer Communication Review. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2602204.2602213. 
  3. ↑ Ramachandran, Anirudh; Feamster, Nick; Vempala, Santosh (2007). "Filtering Spam with Behavioral Blacklisting". https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1282427.1282410. 
  4. ↑ Sundaresan, Srikanth; de Donato, Walter; Feamster, Nick; Teixeira, Renata; Crawford, Sam; Pescapè, Antonio (2011). "Broadband Internet Performance: A View From the Gateway". https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2018436.2018472. 
  5. ↑ "Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies". Stanford University. https://online.stanford.edu/stanford-pre-collegiate-studies. 
  6. ↑ "Nick Feamster Biography". University of Chicago. https://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~feamster/bio.html. 
  7. ↑ Feamster, Nick (2005). Proactive Techniques for Correct and Predictable Internet Routing (Thesis). MIT.
  8. ↑ "Nick Feamster". University of Chicago. https://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~feamster/cv/cv-dec2020.pdf. 
  9. ↑ Feamster, Nick; Dagon, David; others, "Detecting Malware Infections via DNS", US patent 10044748, published 2018-08-07
  10. ↑ "NetMicroscope". NetMicroscope. https://netmicroscope.com/about. 
  11. ↑ "NetMicroscope Uses AI to Improve Network Monitoring for a Better Internet Experience". University of Chicago Polsky Center. 2024-01-01. https://polsky.uchicago.edu/2024/02/01/netmicroscope-uses-ai-to-improve-network-monitoring-for-a-better-internet-experience/. 
  12. ↑ Feamster, Nick; Wee, Susie (1999). "Field-to-frame transcoding with spatial and temporal downsampling". 4. IEEE. pp. 271-275. doi:10.1109/ICIP.1999.819593. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/819593. 
  13. ↑ "Nick Feamster: Fifteen Years of Measuring Access Network Performance". University of Chicago. https://cs.uchicago.edu/events/event/nick-feamster-uchicago-fifteen-years-of-measuring-access-network-performance-from-benchmarks-to-equity/. 
  14. ↑ "The Truth About Faster Internet: It’s Not Worth It". Wall Street Journal. 2019-07-01. https://www.wsj.com/graphics/faster-internet-not-worth-it/. 
  15. ↑ "Nick Feamster’s Research Drives Wall Street Journal Investigation". University of Chicago Data Science Institute. 2019-07-01. https://datascience.uchicago.edu/news/nick-feamsters-research-drives-wall-street-journal-investigation-of-streaming-video/. 
  16. ↑ "Internet Equity Initiative". University of Chicago. https://internetequity.org. 
  17. ↑ "CITP Luncheon Speaker Series: Nick Feamster - Dissecting the FCC’s New Rules on ISPs and Customer Privacy". Princeton University. https://citp.princeton.edu/events/2016/citp-luncheon-speaker-series-nick-feamster-dissecting-fcc%E2%80%99s-new-rules-isps-and-customer. 
  18. ↑ "Comrades Athlete Results: Nick Feamster". FinishTime.co.za. https://results.finishtime.co.za/ComradesAthlete.aspx?id=AF34DB45-4797-4993-9BAB-A3834FCF11EC. 
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 "Nick Feamster: Chicago Lakefront Trail FKT". Fastest Known Time. https://fastestknowntime.com/fkt/nick-feamster-roderick-bowlby-chicago-lakefront-trail-il-2022-03-27. 
  20. ↑ "Chicago Marathon Pace Team". Chicago Marathon. https://www.chicagomarathon.com/runners/runner-information/pace-team-information/. 
  21. ↑ "Nick Feamster". SoundCloud. https://soundcloud.com/nick-feamster. 
  22. ↑ Feamster, Nick; Balakrishnan, Hari; Rexford, Jennifer (2004). "The Case for Separating Routing from Routers". https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~jrex/talks/fdna04.pdf. 
  23. ↑ Feamster, Nick; Rexford, Jennifer; Zegura, Ellen (2013). "The Road to SDN: An Intellectual History of Programmable Networks". Queue (Association for Computing Machinery) 11 (12): 20–40. doi:10.1145/2559899.2560327. ISSN 1542-7730. https://doi.org/10.1145/2559899.2560327. 
  24. ↑ Feamster, Nick; Balakrishnan, Hari (2005). "Detecting BGP Configuration Faults with Static Analysis". https://www.usenix.org/events/nsdi05/tech/feamster/feamster.pdf. 
  25. ↑ "Software Defined Networking Course". Coursera. https://www.coursera.org/learn/sdn. 
  26. ↑ Feamster, Nick (2011). CRI-II-NEW: Collaborative Research: Measurement Infrastructure for Home Networks (Report). National Science Foundation. NSF Award #1059350. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011nsf....1059350F/abstract. Retrieved 2025-10-10. 
  27. ↑ "Measuring Broadband America". Federal Communications Commission. https://www.fcc.gov/general/measuring-broadband-america. 
  28. ↑ Sundaresan, Srikanth; Feamster, Nick; Teixeira, Renata (2015). "Measuring the Performance of User Traffic in Home Wireless Networks". https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/atc14/atc14-paper-sundaresan.pdf. 
  29. ↑ Ramachandran, Anirudh; Feamster, Nick; Vempala, Santosh (2007). "Filtering Spam with Behavioral Blacklisting". https://doi.org/10.1145/1315245.1315288. 
  30. ↑ Tariq, Mukarram Bin; Zeitoun, Amgad; Valancius, Vytautas; Feamster, Nick; Ammar, Mostafa (2008). "Answering Machine Language Queries". Seattle, Washington, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 145–156. doi:10.1145/1402958.1402971. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1402958.1402971. Retrieved 2025-10-11. 
  31. ↑ Jiang, Xi; Liu, Shinan; Gember-Jacobson, Aaron; Bhagoji, Arjun Nitin; Schmitt, Paul; Bronzino, Francesco; Feamster, Nick (2024). "NetDiffusion: Network Data Augmentation Through Protocol-Constrained Traffic Generation". Proceedings of the ACM on Measurement and Analysis of Computing Systems 8 (1): 1–32. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3639037. 
  32. ↑ Bronzino, Francesco; Schmitt, Paul; Chu, Andrew; Feamster, Nick (2024). "Evaluating Networked System Security with Probabilistic Graphical Models". Sydney, NSW, Australia: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 46–52. doi:10.1145/3672198.3673792. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3672198.3673792. Retrieved 2025-10-11. 
  33. ↑ Feamster, Nick; others, "Systems and Methods for Identifying Malicious Domains Using Internet-Wide DNS Lookup Patterns", US patent 8713676, published 2014-04-29
  34. ↑ Hao, Shuang; Syed, Nadeem; Feamster, Nick (2009). "Detecting Spammers with SNARE". https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity09/technical-sessions/presentation/detecting-spammers-snare-spatio-temporal. 
  35. ↑ Singanamalla, Sudheesh (2020-12-08). "Oblivious DNS over HTTPS (ODoH): A Practical Privacy Enhancement to DNS". Cloudflare. https://blog.cloudflare.com/oblivious-dns/. "ODoH itself took inspiration from "Oblivious DNS: Practical Privacy for DNS Queries"" 
  36. ↑ Schmitt, Paul; Edmundson, Anne; Mankin, Allison; Feamster, Nick (2019). "Oblivious DNS: Practical Privacy for DNS Queries". Montreal, Quebec, Canada: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 17–19. doi:10.1145/3340301.3341128. ISBN 9781450368483. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3340301.3341128. Retrieved 2025-10-11. 
  37. ↑ Edmundson, A.; Schmitt, P.; Feamster, N.; Mankin, A. (2018-07-02). Oblivious DNS - Strong Privacy for DNS Queries (Technical report). IETF. draft-annee-dprive-oblivious-dns-00.
  38. ↑ Tanenbaum, Andrew; Feamster, Nick (2021). Computer Networks. Pearson. ISBN 978-1292374062. https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Networks-Global-Andrew-Tanenbaum/dp/1292374063. 
  39. ↑ "Nick Feamster Instructor Page". Coursera. https://www.coursera.org/instructor/feamster. 
  40. ↑ "CS 6250: Computer Networks". Georgia Tech. https://omscs.gatech.edu/cs-6250-computer-networks. 
  41. ↑ "CS6250 Computer Networking". YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpherdrLyny-zJw95jcE-uJkcsIAG1MEn. 
  42. ↑ "Post 'Net Neutrality' Internet Needs New Measurement Tools". Princeton University. 2019-03-29. https://www.princeton.edu/news/2019/03/29/post-net-neutrality-internet-needs-new-measurement-tools-princeton-experts-tell. 
  43. ↑ "Technical Working Group Report on Broadband Internet Access Service Labeling". Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group (BITAG). 2024-08-27. https://www.bitag.org/BITAG-BB-Labels.pdf. 
  44. ↑ "Effort Pushes Computer Scientists to Consider Uses of Technology". Princeton University. 2019-01-08. https://engineering.princeton.edu/news/2019/01/08/effort-pushes-computer-scientists-consider-uses-technology. 
  45. ↑ Feamster, Nick; Balazinska, Magdalena; Harfst, Greg; Balakrishnan, Hari; Karger, David (2002). "Infranet: Circumventing Web Censorship and Surveillance". https://www.usenix.org/conference/11th-usenix-security-symposium/infranet-circumventing-web-censorship-and-surveillance. 
  46. ↑ "First FOCI Workshop 2011". USENIX. https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/foci11/. 
  47. ↑ "Internet Censorship and Online Speech Course". Noise Lab, University of Chicago. https://github.com/noise-lab/censorship-course. 
  48. ↑ "Internet Censorship and Online Speech". University of Chicago. https://noise-lab.net/censorship-course/. 
  49. ↑ "Sony Music Entertainment v. Cox Communications, Inc.". U.S. District Court, E.D. Virginia. 2019. https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/25235146/Sony_Music_Entertainment_et_al_v_Cox_Communications,_Inc_et_al. 
  50. ↑ "Splunk Inc. v. Cribl, Inc.". U.S. District Court, N.D. California. 2021. https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/filings/DIBHTJHA/Splunk_Inc_v_Cribl_Inc_et_al__candce-22-07611__0146.0.pdf. 
  51. ↑ "PECASE Recipients". White House. https://www.nsf.gov/honorary-awards/pecase/recipients?f%5B0%5D=year%3A2007. 
  52. ↑ "Feamster Named ACM Fellow". Princeton University. 2016-12-20. https://engineering.princeton.edu/news/2016/12/20/feamster-named-acm-fellow. 
  53. ↑ "ACM SIGCOMM Rising Star Award Recipients". ACM SIGCOMM. https://www.sigcomm.org/awards/sigcomm-rising-star-award-winners. 
  54. ↑ "TR35 Innovators Under 35". MIT Technology Review. https://www.technologyreview.com/lists/innovators-under-35/. 
  55. ↑ "Sloan Research Fellows". Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. https://sloan.org/fellows-database. 
  56. ↑ "NSF CAREER Award Recipients". National Science Foundation. https://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=503214. 
  57. ↑ Ramachandran, Anirudh; Feamster, Nick (2006). "Understanding the Network-Level Behavior of Spammers". https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/1159913.1159947. 
  58. ↑ "USENIX NSDI Test of Time Award". USENIX. 2015. https://www.usenix.org/conferences/test-of-time-awards. 
  59. ↑ "ACM SIGCOMM Test of Time Paper Award". ACM SIGCOMM. https://www.sigcomm.org/awards/acm-sigcomm-test-of-time-paper-award. 




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