Karen Sollins

## Early Life & Education

Karen Sollins received a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics from Swarthmore College in 1969,  She then went on to work at the Boston Biomedical Research Institution and Eye Research Institution as a programmer and then acting director of the computing facility from 1970 to 1976. Later, she obtained a Master's degree in Computer Science from MIT in 1979, shortly followed by a Ph.D in Computer Science at MIT in 1985. Her doctoral thesis centered on distributed name management for computing networks.

## Career

### Research Scientist in the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science

After receiving her doctoral degrees, Sollins took the role of director of computing resources in the MIT laboratory for computer science from June 1985 to May 1988.  From 1988 to 1998, she published numerous papers in the areas of network security and scalability as a research scientist in the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science.

### Principal Research Scientist in the MIT CSAIL

From March 1999 to today, Sollins has published countless papers as a principal research scientist in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Her research has covered a broad variety of topics including network infrastructure, graph theory, Internet of Things, peer-to-peer computing, ad-hoc networks, and data privacy & security.

### Senior Program Director for Network Research at the NSF

From January 1999 to December 2000, Sollins was on leave from MIT as a senior program director for advanced networking research at the National Science Foundation. There, she chaired a research group consisting of a mix of academics and members of industry to create new standards addressing infrastructural problems.

### Conference Chair

In addition to her research, Sollins has served various positions as Chair and CoChair for SIGCOMM and the IRTF in the areas of information networking and security & privacy.

### Scherman Foundation President and Chair

In 1993, Sollins succeeded her father as President of the Scherman Foundation,  a nonprofit organization supporting local efforts to create a more just, sustainable, and equitable New York, as well as strengthening nationwide democracy and environmental and reproductive justice.  Alongside the new Executive Director, Sandra Silverman, she worked to steer the Foundation towards more explicit commitments to social change and multi-sector grants. She was succeeded as President and Executive Director of the foundation by Mike Pratt in 2009.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 “Karen Sollins.” *Groups.csail.mit.edu*, groups.csail.mit.edu/ana/People/Sollins.html. Accessed 29 Mar. 2023.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 “Clark Selected Pubs.” *Groups.csail.mit.edu*, groups.csail.mit.edu/ana/People/selected\_pubs\_sollins.html. Accessed 29 Mar. 2023.
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 “Karen R. Sollins.” *Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers*, 2023, ieeexplore.ieee.org/author/37317839300. Accessed 29 Mar. 2023.
4. ↑ “Our Story.” *The Scherman Foundation*, www.scherman.org/our-story. Accessed 29 Mar. 2023.
5. ↑ “Mission and History.” *The Scherman Foundation*, www.scherman.org/mission-and-history. Accessed 29 Mar. 2023.