Dr Leslie Cottrell -


SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University

I left the University of Manchester, England in 1967 with a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics to pursue fame and fortune on the Left Coast of the U.S.A. I joined SLAC as a research physicist in High Energy Physics, focusing on real-time data acquisition and analysis in the 1990 Nobel prize winning group that discovered the quark. In 1972/3, I spent a year’s leave of absence as a visiting scientist at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, and in 1979/80 at the IBM U.K. Laboratories at Hursley, England, where I obtained United States Patent 4,688,181 for a a dynamic graphical cursor.

On returning from IBM UK, in 1980, I became the manager of SLAC’s computer networking. In 1982 I became the Assistant Director of SLAC’s Computer Services (SCS). From 1995-1997 I was the Acting Director of SCS. I stepped down from the Assistant Directorship in February 2008. I am now the manager of SLAC’s computer networking and telecommunications. I am also a member of the Energy Sciences Network Site Coordinating Committee (ESCC) and the chairman of the ESnet Network Monitoring Task Force. I served on many advisory groups such as for the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), chaired the review of American Institute of Physics computing review, IHEP/Beijing, Internet2, and FNAL, as well as technical committees such as chairing the ESCC Network Monitoring Working Group, and as a member of the Global Grid Foundation’s Network Monitoring Working Group. I am the chairman of the International Committee for Future Accelerator’s (ICFA) Standing Committee on Inter-regional Connectivity’s (SCIC) Monitoring Group. I am a member of the Electronic Geophysical Year 2007-2008 working group on eGY-Africa (cyber-infrastructure for science in Africa).

I was a leader of the effort that, in 1994, resulted in the first permanent Internet connection to mainland China. In 2002/3, I was the co-PI of teams that captured the Internet2 Land Speed Record twice, a feat that was entered in the Guinness Book of World Records and also earned us the CENIC 2003 On the Road to a Gigabit, Biggest Fastest in the West award. In 2003, 2004, and for a third time in 2005 I was the co-leader of the teams that won the SuperComputing Bandwidth Challenge for the maximum bandwidth utilization.

I am also the PI of the DoE funded Internet End-to-end Performance Monitoring (IEPM) project which has attracted funding of almost $2M since 1997. I am the SLAC PI of the DoE funded Terapaths project, the SLAC/NIIT/MAGGIE project, and the collaboration with ICTP, Trieste.

Networking and distributed computing technology are my main activities. In particular I am focusing on network monitoring and high performance networking. More recently I have focused much activity on measuring the Internet’s Digital Divide” in particular as it applies to Developing countries. I am also very interested in the Web, since being at SLAC (the first Web site outside Europe) in the Web’s early days I used it and as assistant director of computing was able to actively support its development at SLAC. I also contributed a chapter to the book HTML and CGI Unleashed published by Sams/Macmillan as well as an article to the May 1996 edition of the Web Techniques magazine.

I have other interests beyond computers. I used to run, mainly at weekends, Hash when possible, and commute to work come rain or shine on a bicycle. I enjoyed mountain climbing especially on snow and ice, and hiking in the Sierra back-country. More recently I have taken up golf and am a member of the Stanford Golf Course. I collect stamps, and am also interested in geneology and tracing the family history.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik9_ezq3n2A&w=765]

Slides: Dr Leslie Cottrell iWeek 2011 Presentation
Audio:  Quantifying Internet performance and the worldwide digital divide: the emergence of Africa

Previously spoke at:

iWeek 2011

iWeek 2010