ACM MemberNet - Simon S. Lam Wins 2004 ACM SIGCOMM Award for...

SIGCOMM, ACM's Special Interest Group on Data Communications, has awarded its highest honor to Simon S. Lam of the University of Texas at Austin for his seminal contributions to computer networking. Lam was recognized by the 2004 ACM SIGCOMM Award for his vision, breadth, and rigor in contributing to secure network communication.

Through his research, teaching, and service, Lam provided forward-looking foundations for computer networking research. His work in 1993 on the design and construction of the first socket-like abstraction for secure network programming preceded by two years the initial Internet draft on the secure socket layer (SSL) widely used today for e-commerce between browsers and servers. His research extended to the analysis of network and multiaccess protocols and queueing networks, and to the design of mechanisms for quality of service.

Beginning with his PhD thesis, Lam provided insights on sharing broadcast channels by random access. His work led to effective algorithms for adaptive control and served as a foundation for subsequent research on random access protocols.

While at IBM Research, Lam made fundamental contributions to the theory of queueing networks. His efforts were motivated by applications to the performance analysis of packet switching networks, including assessment of network congestion control and window-based flow control. During the 1980s, Lam played a major role in the design, specification, verification, and conversion of network protocols. His work inspired a large body of subsequent research on the topic.

Lam made substantial contributions to network and end system support for quality of service guarantees. His formulation of an end-to-end delay guarantee for a general class of servers unified previous work and simplified subsequent analysis of quality of service disciplines.

Lam is an ACM Fellow and an IEEE Fellow. He is a winner of the 2004 W. Wallace McDowell Award, the 2001 William R. Bennett Prize, and the 1975 Leonard G. Abraham Prize. Over the course of 25 years in computer networking and data communications, Lam contributed to the technical organization of the community in many ways, serving as Editor in Chief of IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, the field's premier journal. He has supervised numerous doctoral students, many of whom are themselves ongoing contributors to computer networking.