Michael Schroeder (born 1945) is an American computer scientist. His areas of research include computer security, distributed systems and operating systems and he is perhaps best known as the co-inventor of the

Needham–Schroeder protocol The Needham–Schroeder protocol is one of the two key transport protocols intended for use over an insecure network, both proposed by Roger Needham and Michael Schroeder. These are: * The ''Needham–Schroeder Symmetric Key Protocol'', based on ...

. In 2001 he co-founded the Microsoft Research Silicon Valley lab and was the assistant managing director until the lab was disbanded in 2014.

Early life and career

Schroeder was born in 1945 in Richland, Washington. He did his undergraduate work at Washington State University and went to graduate school at MIT, obtaining his PhD in 1972. Starting in 1976 he has been on the MIT EECS department faculty, at

Xerox PARC PARC (Palo Alto Research Center; formerly Xerox PARC) is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. Founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, the company was originally a division of Xero ...

, and at the

DEC Systems Research Center The Systems Research Center (SRC) was a research laboratory created by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1984, in Palo Alto, California. DEC SRC was founded by a group of computer scientists, led by Robert Taylor, who left the Computer ...

. At MIT he was involved with

Multics Multics ("Multiplexed Information and Computing Service") is an influential early time-sharing operating system based on the concept of a single-level memory.Dennis M. Ritchie, "The Evolution of the Unix Time-sharing System", Communications of ...

, where his contributions included a seminal work on security architecture for shared information systems. In 1977 Schroeder and Roger Needham designed a new (unclassified) computer network protocol for distributed

authentication server An authentication server provides a network service that applications use to authentication, authenticate the credentials, usually account names and passwords, of their users. When a client submits a valid set of credentials, it receives a cryptogr ...

using a Key Distribution Center (KDC). This idea eventually led to the Kerberos authentication scheme used by the MIT's

Project Athena Project Athena was a joint project of MIT, Digital Equipment Corporation, and IBM to produce a campus-wide distributed computing environment for educational use. It was launched in 1983, and research and development ran until June 30, 1991. , A ...

. Some other systems he has built are Grapevine (distributed system), the filesystem of

Cedar Cedar may refer to: Trees and plants *''Cedrus'', common English name cedar, an Old-World genus of coniferous trees in the plant family Pinaceae *Cedar (plant), a list of trees and plants known as cedar Places United States * Cedar, Arizona * ...

, Topaz (distributed OS), Autonet (LAN) and Pachyderm (web based email).

Awards

In 2004, he was inducted as a

Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

of the Association for Computing Machinery. In 2006, ACM SIGSAC presented him with the Outstanding Innovations Award "for technical contributions to the field of computer and communication security that have had lasting impact in furthering or understanding the theory and/or development of commercial systems." In 2007, NIST/NSA gave him the National Computer Systems Security Award. In 2008, ACM SIGOPS chose the paper ''Grapevine: An Exercise in Distributed Computing'', which he coauthored, for a Hall of Fame Award "that recognizes the most influential operating systems papers in the peer-reviewed literature at least ten year old."

Gilbert Munger

He is a leading expert on the American landscape painter

Gilbert Munger Gilbert Munger (April 14, 1837 – January 27, 1903) was a late 19th-century American landscape painter whose romantic yet topographically accurate landscapes helped to introduce the newly opened West to the American public. Biography Gilbert Dav ...

(1837–1903), for whom he authors a web-based

catalogue raisonné A ''catalogue raisonné'' (or critical catalogue) is a comprehensive, annotated listing of all the known artworks by an artist either in a particular medium or all media. The works are described in such a way that they may be reliably identified ...

and archive of period documents. With J. Gray Sweeney of Arizona State University he wrote the book ''Gilbert Munger: Quest for Distinction'' (Afton Historical Society Press, 2003).

References

External links

Michael D. Schroeder web page

The Gilbert Munger Web Site
American computer scientists Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery People associated with computer security 1945 births Living people Scientists at PARC (company) Multics people Washington State University alumni {{US-academic-scientist-stub