Balakrishnan receives 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award from SIGCOMM

Hari B

MIT EECS professor and CSAIL principal investigator Hari Balakrishnan has received the annual SIGCOMM Lifetime Achievement Award, for his contributions to mobile and wireless systems, resilient networks, and congestion control.

Balakrishnan is the Fujitsu Chair Professor at EECS and leads CSAIL’s Networks and Mobile Systems group.

His current research focuses on networking, data management, and mobile sensing. Throughout his career he has made many contributions to mobile and sensor computing research, Internet transport and routing, overlay networks and P2P systems, and data management. 

Besides his academic work, he is the founder of Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT), a smartphone telematics platform that reduces risky driving by 40%. Its products are used daily by drivers worldwide in popular smartphone applications, supporting many leading insurance and rideshare companies in 25 countries to help reduce the millions of yearly road crashes. 

“Hari is truly a prolific and extraordinary scholar, contributing highly influential research to computer networks, networked systems, and mobile computing,” says MIT professor and CSAIL director Daniela Rus. “Through his incredible thought work and vigor, he has also created a successful startup that is changing the way we think about dangerous driving while vastly improving overall road safety.” 

In 2020 he was awarded the prestigious Infosys Prize in Engineering and Computer Science. He is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2015 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.