Kimberly C. "KC" Claffy is director of the Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis at the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

. In 2017 she was awarded the Jonathan B. Postel Service Award and inducted into the

Internet Hall of Fame The Internet Hall of Fame is an honorary lifetime achievement award administered by the Internet Society (ISOC) in recognition of individuals who have made significant contributions to the development and advancement of the Internet.

in 2019.

Early life and education

Claffy studied

symbolic system In logic, mathematics, computer science, and linguistics, a formal language consists of words whose letters are taken from an alphabet and are well-formed according to a specific set of rules. The alphabet of a formal language consists of sym ...

s at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. She earned her doctoral degree under the supervision of George Polyzos at the

in 1994. Claffy was a summer intern at

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile tel ...

Harry Diamond Laboratories The Harry Diamond Laboratories (HDL) was a research facility of the Ordnance Development Division of the National Bureau of Standards and later the US Army, most notable for its work on proximity fuzes in World War II. The organization was founded ...

and the

Federal Reserve The Federal Reserve System (often shortened to the Federal Reserve, or simply the Fed) is the central banking system of the United States of America. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a ...

. Her years in graduate school occurred during the period in which the

federal government of the United States The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a fede ...

relaxed control over the Internet. The Internet became a more commercial entity interconnecting a rapidly-increasing number of networks, hosts and users, and as the World Wide Web expanded, the nature of the traffic on the Internet changed. This inspired Claffy to develop initiatives that share Internet data and support Internet data analysis.

Research and career

Claffy was promoted to associate research scientist in 1994 and research scientist in 2007. In 1996 Claffy founded the Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) in the supercomputing centre at the

. At the CAIDA Claffy works on internet cartography that characterises the changing nature of

Internet topology World Wide Web topology is the network topology of the World Wide Web, as seen as a network of web pages connected by hyperlinks. The Jellyfish and Bow Tie models are two attempts at modeling the topology of hyperlinks between web pages. Models ...

and

Internet traffic Internet traffic is the flow of data within the entire Internet, or in certain network links of its constituent networks. Common traffic measurements are total volume, in units of multiples of the byte, or as transmission rates in bytes per cert ...

dynamics. This involves mapping and measuring internet data in an effort to make the internet safer for the general public. Claffy is part of the

Named Data Networking Named Data Networking (NDN) (related to content-centric networking (CCN), content-based networking, data-oriented networking or information-centric networking (ICN)) is a proposed Future Internet architecture inspired by years of empirical researc ...

project. In 2015, Claffy shared the

IEEE Internet Award IEEE Internet Award is a Technical Field Award established by the IEEE in June 1999. The award is sponsored by Nokia Corporation. It may be presented annually to an individual or up to three recipients, for exceptional contributions to the adv ...

with

Vern Paxson Vern Edward Paxson is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He also leads the Networking and Security Group at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, California. His interests range from tr ...

for "seminal contributions to the field of Internet measurement, including security and network data analysis, and for distinguished leadership in and service to the Internet community by providing open-access data and tools". Her work established definitions for the concept of Internet "traffic flows", in which most packets flowing across the Internet are understood to be part of a connection with coherent characteristics, rather than isolated, unconnected messages. In 2019, Claffy was inducted into the

for her groundbreaking work in the field of internet measurement and analysis. She was awarded an

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

Convergence Accelerator planning grant to evaluate the feasibility of creating an

open knowledge Open knowledge (or free knowledge) is knowledge that is free to use, reuse, and redistribute without legal, social, or technological restriction. Open knowledge organizations and activists have proposed principles and methodologies related to the ...

network on the properties of the Internet identifier system.

Awards and honors

* 2000

San Francisco Women on the Web San Francisco Women on the Web (SFWOW) is a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California. It works to serve, educate and empower women in technology through professional development, support, and networking opportunities. In 1998, the ...

Top 25 Women of the Web * 2015

* 2016 N2Women 10 Women in Networking/Communications That You Should Know * 2017

Internet Society The Internet Society (ISOC) is an American nonprofit advocacy organization founded in 1992 with local chapters around the world. Its mission is "to promote the open development, evolution, and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people ...

Jonathan B. Postel Service Award * 2018 π Person of the Year * 2019

Selected publications

* * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Claffy, KC Internet pioneers Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Stanford University alumni University of California, San Diego alumni Women Internet pioneers