I discovered that I needed to continue doing academic research while also working on important practical problems. DeMillo has worked in the space between research and practice ever since. He has held senior faculty positions at Purdue University, Georgia Tech and University of Padua in Italy, and he oversaw computer research at the National Science Foundation. But no matter where he was working, DeMillo devoted time to his research into software engineering and cryptography. He wrote one of the first papers on cryptographic protocols and received much attention in 1997 for discovering a serious vulnerability in smart cards, the plastic cards that can store large amounts of personal information and have been touted as alternatives to cash and credit cards.
Universities just move too slow.
Speed wasn't a problem at Telcordia. We worked with ad agencies in New York to understand the flow of money and content in the advertising industry and developed one of the first server-based approaches to online advertising. This technology resulted in several patents and became the basis for some of Bellcore's AdaptX e-commerce products. DeMillo and his team created other e-commerce technologies that enabled personalization, online ordering and Internet banking. They also built one of the first voice-activated user interfaces to the Web.