Robert Nicholas Maxwell Watson (born 3 May 1977) is a

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

developer, and founder of the

TrustedBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable h ...

Project. He is currently employed as a Professor of Systems, Security, and Architecture in the Security Research Group at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

Computer Laboratory.https://www.cst.cam.ac.uk/news/plethora-professors Announcement of Professorship

Education

Watson graduated in computer science from

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...

and has attained a PhD from

. As well as Cambridge, he has worked at the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in 1887 and is part of the United States Department of Health and Human Service ...

Trusted Information Systems Trusted Information Systems, Inc. (TIS), was a computer security research and development company during the 1980s and 1990s, performing computer and communications (information) security research for organizations such as NSA, DARPA, ARL, AFRL ...

, Network Associates,

McAfee McAfee Corp. ( ), formerly known as McAfee Associates, Inc. from 1987 to 1997 and 2004 to 2014, Network Associates Inc. from 1997 to 2004, and Intel Security Group from 2014 to 2017, is an American proprietary software company focused on online ...

, and SPARTA. He obtained a PhD in computer security from the

University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory The Department of Computer Science and Technology, formerly the Computer Laboratory, is the computer science department of the University of Cambridge. it employed 56 faculty members, 45 support staff, 105 research staff, and about 205 researc ...

, supervised by Ross Anderson and sponsored by Google.

Research

Watson's work has been supported by

DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adva ...

Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer Co ...

, the Navy, and other US government agencies. His main research interests are network security and operating system security. His main

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

software contributions include his work in developing the multi-threaded and multi-processor

network stack, the

project, and OpenBSM. His writing has been featured in forums such as ACM's Queue Magazine, the

USENIX USENIX is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization based in Berkeley, California and founded in 1975 that supports advanced computing systems, operating system (OS), and computer networking research. It organizes several confe ...

Annual Technical Conference, BSDCon, and a Slashdot interview. He was also a FreeBSD Core Team member from 2000 to 2012.FreeBSD Core Team Alumni
20 July 2012 Watson is coauthor of the standard textbook ''The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System'' (2nd ed., 2015) by

Marshall Kirk McKusick Marshall Kirk McKusick (born January 19, 1954) is an American computer scientist, known for his extensive work on BSD UNIX, from the 1980s to FreeBSD in the present day. He served on the board of the USENIX Association from 1986 to 1992 and aga ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Watson, Robert Free software programmers Living people FreeBSD people People from Harrow, London 1977 births British computer scientists Members of the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory Fellows of St John's College, Cambridge