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

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular ...

developer, and founder of the

TrustedBSD FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular ope ...

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

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

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. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

and has attained a PhD from

. As well as Cambridge, he has worked at the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

Trusted Information Systems Trusted Information Systems (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, Army Research Lab, ...

Network Associates 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 global computer security software company head ...

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 global computer security software company head ...

, 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 35 academic staff, 25 support staff, 35 affiliated research staff, and about 15 ...

, 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 Adv ...

Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...

, 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 the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

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

network stack, the

project, and

OpenBSM OpenBSM is an open source implementation of Sun's Basic Security Module (BSM) Audit API and file format. BSM, which is a system used for auditing, describes a set of system call and library interfaces for managing audit records as well as a token ...

. His writing has been featured in forums such as ACM's Queue Magazine, the USENIX Annual Technical Conference, BSDCon, and a Slashdot interview. He was also a

FreeBSD Core Team The FreeBSD Project is run by FreeBSD committers, or developers who have direct commit access to the master Git repository. The FreeBSD Core Team exists to provide direction and is responsible for setting goals for the FreeBSD Project and to provi ...

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 a computer scientist, known for his extensive work on BSD UNIX, from the 1980s to FreeBSD in the present day. He was president of the USENIX Association from 1990 to 1992 and again from 2002 ...

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