Michael J. Freedman is an American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

who is the Robert E. Kahn Professor of Computer Science at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

, where he works on

distributed systems A distributed system is a system whose components are located on different networked computers, which communicate and coordinate their actions by passing messages to one another from any system. Distributed computing is a field of computer sci ...

, networking, and security. He is also the cofounder of database company

Timescale Time scale may refer to: *Time standard, a specification of either the rate at which time passes, points in time, or both *A duration or quantity of time: **Orders of magnitude (time) as a power of 10 in seconds; **A specific unit of time *Geologi ...

Education and career

Freedman graduated from

Wyoming Valley West High School Wyoming Valley West High School is a public high school in Plymouth, Pennsylvania, Plymouth, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. It is the only public high school in the Wyoming Valley West School District. The current bu ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

in 1997. In 2001 and 2002, he earned an S.B. and a M.Eng., respectively, at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

. In 2005 and 2007, he earned an M.S. and a Ph.D., respectively, from the

Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences The Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (commonly known as Courant or CIMS) is the mathematics research school of New York University (NYU), and is among the most prestigious mathematics schools and mathematical sciences research cente ...

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

, and spent 2005–2007 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 ...

. Freedman completed his doctoral studies under David Mazières, who Freedman worked with to release the Coral Content Distribution Network in 2004. In 2007, he was appointed a professor at Princeton University. With David Mazières, Freedman designed and operated the Coral Content Distribution Network, a

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer n ...

content distribution network A content delivery network, or content distribution network (CDN), is a geographically distributed network of proxy servers and their data centers. The goal is to provide high availability and performance by distributing the service spatially rel ...

that was initially released in 2004 and operated until 2015. In March 2006, Freedman co-founded Illuminics Systems, an information technology company working in the area of IP geolocation and intelligence, with

Martin Casado Martín Casado is a Spanish-born American software engineer, entrepreneur, and investor. He is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, and was a pioneer of software-defined networking, and a co-founder of Nicira Networks. Early life and educatio ...

. The company was acquired by Quova in November 2006. Freedman's research interests include

, networking, and security. In addition to his work with the Coral Content Distribution Network, he has designed systems such as

TimescaleDB TimescaleDB is an open-source time series database developed by Timescale Inc. It is written in C and extends PostgreSQL. TimescaleDB is a relational database and supports standard SQL queries. Additional SQL functions and table structures prov ...

and JetStream.

Recognition

In 2011, Freedman received the

Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers The Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) is the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on outstanding scientists and engineers in the early stages of their independent research careers. The White ...

for his work in designing, building, and prototyping a "modern, highly scalable, replicated storage cloud system" in addition to efforts to increase student diversity at Princeton University. His research involving the design and deployment of geo-distributed systems earned him the

Grace Murray Hopper Award The Grace Murray Hopper Award (named for computer pioneer RADM Grace Hopper) has been awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) since 1971. The award goes to a computer professional who makes a single, significant technical or serv ...

in 2018. He was elected as an

ACM Fellow ACM or A.C.M. may refer to: Aviation * AGM-129 ACM, 1990–2012 USAF cruise missile * Air chief marshal * Air combat manoeuvring or dogfighting * Air cycle machine * Arica Airport (Colombia) (IATA: ACM), in Arica, Amazonas, Colombia Computing ...

in 2019 "for contributions to robust distributed systems for the modern cloud", and was awarded the

SIGOPS Mark Weiser Award The ACM SIGOPS (Special Interest Group on Operating Systems) Mark Weiser Award is awarded to an individual who has shown creativity and innovation in operating system research. The recipients began their career no earlier than 20 years prior to nom ...

by the organization in 2021.

Selected publications

* * * * *

References

External links

Michael J. Freedman
on the Princeton University website * {{DEFAULTSORT:Freedman, Michael J. Living people American computer scientists New York University alumni MIT School of Engineering alumni Princeton University faculty 21st-century American engineers Grace Murray Hopper Award laureates Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Year of birth missing (living people) Recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers