November 19, 2008, 5:30pm, Douglas Aud.
"My Work and My Life"
Leonard Kleinrock, UCLA

Abstract:
This talk will describe the factors that influenced the author in choosing his life's journey. He will describe the early influences, the chance occurrences, the environment in which he grew up and was educated, the barriers and challenges he met and overcame, the work he engaged in and the achievements he accomplished. He will provide lessons from his life and work that will be of interest to the audience.

Biography:
Dr. Leonard Kleinrock developed the mathematical theory of packet networks, the technology underpinning the Internet, while a graduate student at MIT. This was in the period 1960-1962, nearly a decade before the birth of the Internet which occurred in his laboratory when his Host computer at UCLA became the first node of the Internet in September 1969. He wrote the first paper and published the first book on the subject; he also directed the transmission of the first message ever to pass over the Internet. He was listed by the Los Angeles Times in 1999 as among the `50 People Who Most Influenced Business This Century'. He was also listed as among the 33 most influential living Americans in the December 2006 Atlantic Monthly. Kleinrock's work was further recognized when he received the 2007 National Medal of Science, the highest honor for achievement in science bestowed by the President of the United States.

Leonard Kleinrock received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1963. He has served as a Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Los Angeles since then, serving as Chairman of the department from 1991-1995. He received his BEE degree from CCNY in 1957 and his MS degree from MIT in 1959. He also received Honorary Doctorates from CCNY in 1997, from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2000, from the University of Bologna in 2005, from Politecnico di Turino in 2005 and from the University of Judaism in 2007. He was the first President and Cofounder of Linkabit Corporation, the company that spawned numerous wireless spinoffs in San Diego. He is Co-founder and Chairman of Nomadix, Inc., a high-technology firm located in Southern California. He is also Founder and Chairman of TTI/Vanguard, an advanced technology forum organization based in Santa Monica, California. He has published approximately 250 papers and authored six books on a wide array of subjects including packet switching networks, packet radio networks, local area networks, broadband networks, gigabit networks, nomadic computing, performance evaluation, and peer-to-peer networks. During his tenure at UCLA, Dr. Kleinrock has supervised the research for 47 Ph.D. students and numerous M.S. students. These former students now form a core group of the world's most advanced networking experts. A number are full professors at leading universities, and many are associated with major research firms in the area of computer-communications.