Prior to joining UNC, Porter was an Assistant Professor at Stony Brook University. Porter's research interests broadly involve developing more efficient and secure computer systems. Porter earned a Ph.D. and M.S. from The University of Texas at Austin, and a B.A. from Hendrix College. He has received awards including the NSF CAREER Award, Best Paper at FAST 2016 and EuroSys 2016, and the Bert Kay Outstanding Dissertation Award from UT Austin.