2005-06 Distinguished Speaker Series

Speaker Biography

TOM LEIGHTON co-founded Akamai Technologies in September 1998. Serving as Chief Scientist, Dr. Leighton is Akamai's technology visionary as well as a key member of the Executive Committee setting the company's direction.

As one of the world's preeminent authorities on algorithms for network applications, Dr. Leighton's work behind establishing Akamai was based on recognizing that a solution to freeing up Web congestion could be found in applied mathematics and algorithms. Akamai has demonstrated this through the creation of the world's largest distributed computing platform that dynamically routes content and applications across a network of over 15,000 servers. Dr. Leighton's technology achievements at Akamai earned him recognition as one of the Top 10 Technology Innovators in U.S. News & World Report.

A Professor of Applied Mathematics at MIT, he has served as the Head of the Algorithms Group in MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science since its inception in 1996.

Dr. Leighton holds numerous patents involving cryptography, digital rights management, and algorithms for networks. During the course of his career, he has served on dozens of government, industrial and academic review committees; program committees; and editorial boards. He is a former two-term chair of the 2,000-member Association of Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Complexity Theory, and a former two-term editor-in-chief of the Journal of the ACM, the nation's premier journal for computer science research. Dr. Leighton is a Fellow for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was appointed in 2003 as a member of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC). In 2004 he was elected into the National Academy of Engineering for contributions to the design of networks and circuits and for technology for Web content delivery.