Dr. Karen R. Sollins is a Principal Research Scientist in the Advanced Network Architecture Group of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she conducts research in computer science. She received her B.A. in Mathematics from Swarthmore College in 1969, M.S. in Computer Science from MIT in 1979, and Ph.D. in Computer Science from MIT in 1985, with her doctoral thesis addressing distributed name management. Sollins's extensive career trajectory includes early roles as a Programming Tutor at Swarthmore College (1968-1969), IBM Summer Intern (1968), Programmer at Boston Biomedical Research Institute (1970-1971) and Retina Foundation/Eye Research Institute (1971-1976), Acting Director of Computing Facility at Retina Foundation/Eye Research Institute (1975-1976), Graduate Research Assistant and Teaching Assistant at MIT (1976-1985), Postdoctoral Associate at MIT (February-June 1985), Director of Computing Resources at MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (1985-1988), Research Scientist there (1988-1998), Senior Program Director for Advanced Networking Research at the National Science Foundation (1999-2000), Principal Research Scientist at CSAIL (1999-present), and Visiting Scientist at USC/ISI (2005-present).

Sollins's research interests encompass support for network-based systems and applications, authentication protocols, global naming, architectural challenges for extremely long-lived global information meshes such as the Information Mesh Project, and extreme scaling in networks. She has published extensively, with key works including "Tussle in Cyberspace: Defining Tomorrow’s Internet" (ACM SIGCOMM 2002, extended in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking 2005; recipient of ACM SIGCOMM Test of Time Award in 2013 with co-authors David D. Clark, John Wroclawski, and Robert Braden), "Addressing Reality: An Architectural Response to Real-World Demands on the Internet" (SIGCOMM Workshop on Future Directions in Network Architecture, 2003), "Cascaded Authentication" (IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, 1988), "IoT Big Data Security and Privacy vs. Innovation" (IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 2018), and contributions to cybersecurity testbeds and information-centric networking. Elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2012 for notable contributions to computer privacy, security, and distributed systems architecture, Sollins has also served as guest editor for a special issue of Personal Communications on Smart Environments (2000), chaired mixed academic-industry research groups on infrastructural problems, and engaged with standards communities. At MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, she teaches courses including 6.1800 and 6.UAT. Her influential scholarship has shaped modern network architecture design, security experimentation, and privacy considerations in distributed systems.

Professional Email: sollins@csail.mit.edu