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Professor Frans Kaashoek: Frans Kaashoek: ACM-Infosys Foundation Award $150K Recipient, Internationally Renowned MIT Professor and Researcher, Innovating Entrepreneur Company Founder and Executive
A professor of Computer Science and Engineering in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Kaashoek, 46, is also a member of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and acknowledges the collaborative benefits of his colleagues and students. In 2011, Professor Kaashoek received the ACM-Infosys Foundation Award and the $150,000 Prize in the Computing Sciences for his contributions to the structuring, robustness, scalability, and security of software systems underlying many applications. As noted by the ACM, "Kaashoek's advances have led to efficient, portable, and highly distributed applications of software systems, fostering wider use of portable embedded and distributed systems. He also used information flow control techniques to address a major security challenge in broadly deployed commercial systems. In addition to his groundbreaking research, Kaashoek founded commercial ventures that have enabled expanded content distribution like large, high-quality video files to travel over the Internet, and that have enhanced protection of large enterprise networks using network behavioral analysis software." Kaashoek was Chief Scientist and Co-founder of Sightpath, Inc. The company was acquired by Cisco Systems in 2000. He also helped found Mazu Networks, Inc. where Kaashoek served as a director of Mazu Networks until its acquisition by Riverbed Technology, Inc. in 2009.

Kaashoek was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2006, and was named an ACM Fellow in 2004. In that year, he also received the William R. Bennett Prize Paper Award from the IEEE. He won the inaugural Mark Weiser Award from ACM’s Special Interest Group on Operating Systems in 2001. A graduate of Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, he earned a Doctorandus Computer Science degree (equivalent to an M.S. degree) and a Doctor Computer Science degree (equivalent to a Ph.D. degree).