The evolution of our networking group over the past quarter-century encapsulates ICSI’s role as a place where top minds come together from across sectors to launch ideas—and careers. With funding from AT&T, the current networking group got its start in 1998 with three founding members: Scott Shenker, who came to ICSI from Xerox PARC, and Sally Floyd and Vern Paxson from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. They were soon joined by Mark Handley and Turing Award winner Richard Karp, forming the finest collection of networking researchers in the world—four of whom have since been recognized with ACM SIGCOMM Awards.
Over the years, the ICSI networking group has welcomed a steady stream of students, postdocs, and researchers, and its alumni have become faculty at, among other places, Harvard University, University College London, University of Texas at Austin, New York University, and the Max Planck Institute; several current members also have joint appointments with UC Berkeley. Today, the group continues to build on its tradition of fostering innovative ideas—and innovative people—at the confluence of industry, academia, and government with forward-looking research in security, cybercrime, Internet architecture, and more.
This story was published in January 2026 as part of a retrospective series highlighting ICSI’s accomplishments and impacts over the years. To learn about our ongoing work, explore our Core Research Themes.