Over the years, Robin Sommer has been involved with ICSI as a graduate student intern, IFI-DAAD fellow, staff researcher, Principal Investigator, and external collaborator. Today, he is co-founder of Corelight, a startup spun out of the work he did at ICSI with collaborators Vern Paxson and Seth Hall that has attracted $160 million in venture funding and grown into one of the leading solutions for network security monitoring.
Looking back, Sommer credits his early experience through the IFI-DAAD fellowship with setting him on a course he never expected. “I consider myself really fortunate to have received this opportunity,” Sommer said. “It clearly changed my career for the better.”
Broader horizons
One of the key benefits of any postdoctoral fellowship, in his view, is the exposure to new ideas and new ways of working. “As a grad student, you learn a certain way, usually how your advisor operates. To see how other advisors operate and how different scientific institutions operate—and especially coming to the U.S. from Europe—it just broadens your horizon,” he said.
For researchers from outside the United States, a fellowship at ICSI brings special benefits because of the institute’s focus on cultivating a truly international community. Over the years, ICSI has hosted more than 400 IFI-DAAD fellows from Germany, as well as students, postdocs and visiting researchers from many other countries. At ICSI, visitors find a welcoming environment where ideas—not titles—are what matters.
“Students coming to ICSI for the first time are often surprised by how well and how quickly they are integrated into these small groups of really excellent researchers,” said Sommer. “As a young researcher, I had direct access to some of the most eminent researchers in my domain. It was amazing. And over time, you can become part of that and pay it back to the next generation of students.”
A different measure of success
Success at ICSI is measured not simply by a tally of publications within the confines of one’s academic silo, but by the reach and impact of one’s work. This makes for a uniquely collaborative atmosphere, where serendipitous conversations spark endeavors that span across disciplines and bring ideas to fruition.
“My research focus was always at the boundary of academic research and getting stuff out there and deployed,” said Sommer. “We were writing a lot of papers, but we also had the opportunity to actually see things through, so that at the end somebody was actually using what we were doing. In academia, I think that is unfortunately rare.”
One of the attributes of ICSI that staff researchers and fellows value most is the freedom to follow one’s own interests and ideas. This has enabled a track record of remarkably ambitious, creative projects, groundbreaking theoretical advances, high-profile discoveries, and pioneering startups.
“ICSI is a very unique place,” says Sommer. “You have this pure academic research institute without any teaching obligations. If you have the funding, there is a lot of freedom to pursue your research interests. That translates to the fellowships, too. Even as a young researcher, you are basically trusted to develop your own path—and at ICSI, good things come out of that.”
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.