David Choffnes

• Distributed systems
• Networking
• Privacy and security
• Measuring deployed Internet-scale systems (including mobile and IoT)
• Designing solutions to address problems with reliability, efficiency, and security

• PhD in Computer Science, Northwestern University
• MS in Computer Science, Northwestern University
• BA in Physics and French, Amherst College

David Choffnes is a professor in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University, based in Boston. He is the executive director and a founding member of Northeastern's Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute, which aims to safeguard critical technology by forging partnerships with industry leaders and international academics.

Choffnes aims to understand and improve the privacy, security, performance, and reliability of internet systems. To do so, he measures these systems to understand how well they match existing models and assumptions. In the process of investigating the root causes for violations of those models and assumptions, he often designs, builds, and evaluates new models and systems to allow researchers, users, and policymakers to benefit.

Choffnes has co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications, garnered more than 9,000 citations, and earned funding from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Homeland Security, Google, Comcast, Verizon, Arcep, and the Data Transparency Lab. Choffnes‘ research has been covered in print and on film, including ABC’s 20/20, CBS News, the documentary Harvest, PBS, NPR, the Boston Globe, NBC News, WIRED, Vice News, and Science Magazine. His awards include an NSF CAREER Award, two Google Faculty Awards, two IRTF Applied Networking Research Prizes, a USENIX Security Distinguished Paper Award, an NDSS Distinguished Paper Award, the ACM/CRA Computing Innovation Fellowship, and the Outstanding Dissertation Award in EECS at Northwestern University.