Colin Dixon

I'm a third year student in the graduate program here at UW, and my interests are primarily in networks and distributed systems. My advisors are Tom Anderson and Arvind Krishnamurthy.

Current Work

I am currently working on next-generation Internet protocol design. This broad area includes work on future Internets as well as work on manageability and security. I am increasingly interested in computer and network security, specifically electronic criminal economies and botnets.

I am also interesting in how to evolve future Internets and (more importantly) Internet Applications. Along these lines I am interested in how to combine virtualization techniques with automatic configuration and management to create a richer space for new applications than exists today.

I received my M.S. in computer science from the University of Washington Department of Computer Science and Engineering in June 2007 for work with Phalanx: a scalable, deployable system for denial of service mitigation.

Publications

Previous Work

I received my B.S. in computer science and B.S. in mathematics from the University of Maryland in 2005. While I was there I worked on anonymous communication with Bobby Bhattacharjee as a part of the Gemstone Program. I also worked on approximating vertex cover with Samir Khuller as part of the Computer Science Honors Program.

Interests

When I'm not sitting in front of a computer hacking code for an upcoming paper deadline or project there are a bunch of things I like to get out and do.

I'm an avid ultralight backpacker which I picked up largely through my Dad (that's me on the front page) who co-founded the backpacking magazine Backpacking Light. You can find some recent trips I took with him on his website. Also, you can find some (poorly organized and labeled) pictures of recent hikes around Seattle at my personal site.

I've also been a reasonably active cyclist in the past, but so far the weather and hills in Seattle have somewhat discouraged me from finding the good rides.