Co-Founder and Chief Scientist, Akamai Professor of Applied Mathematics, MIT

Tom Leighton has published more 100 research papers in the areas of parallel algorithms and architectures, distributed computing, communication protocols for networks, combinatorial optimization, probabilistic methods, VLSI computation and design, sequential algorithms, and graph theory. He is also the author of two books, including a leading text on parallel algorithms and architectures.

Leighton holds numerous patents involving algorithms for networks, cryptography, and digital rights management -- many of which have been licensed or sold to major corporations.

Tom Leighton received a B.S.E. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University in 1978, and Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from MIT in 1981. Leighton was a Bantrell Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) from 1981 to 1983, and he joined the MIT faculty in Applied Mathematics in 1982.

He recently began a two-year appointment to the President's Information Technology Advisory Council. Most recently, he has been named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.