Technology Review Taps UCSD Alum for Young-Innovator Honor
San Diego, CA, September 11, 2006 -- Sumeet Singh has been named one of the nation’s top 35 innovators under age 35 by MIT’s Technology Review magazine. Singh is being honored for research he started as a Ph.D. student in Computer Science and Engineering at UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering. The project overseen by two Calit2 academic participants -- Singh's thesis advisors George Varghese and Stefan Savage -- yielded a new way to identify worm and virus attacks across the Internet or other high-speed networks almost as soon as outbreaks occur.
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In addition to developing the fundamental approach – called “content sifting” – Singh was instrumental in transitioning these ideas from the lab to the marketplace. In the summer of 2004, he put his Ph.D. on hold to co-found Netsift, Inc. – a company acquired only a year later by Cisco Systems Inc. for approximately $30 million in cash and options. Sumeet currently works at Cisco Systems Inc.
“When Sumeet created the early prototypes in 2004, nearly instantaneous identification of a worm or virus outbreak across a network was widely viewed as an impossible problem,” said Stefan Savage, a professor of Computer Science and Engineering at UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering and a former NetSift, Inc. consultant.
Sumeet’s contribution to this open problem in network security, however, demonstrated that you can filter heavy network traffic and both identify outbreaks almost as soon as they occur and generate a “fingerprint” or signature of the virus or worm. These signatures, typically about 40 characters in length, can be used by network engineers to block the malicious traffic or otherwise contain the outbreak.
The algorithms search for strings of 1s and 0s that occur more frequently than you would expect based on usual network activity. Within this subset of network traffic, the algorithms look for communication patterns in which the same string of characters goes from many sources to many destinations, a rare pattern in network traffic that often indicates a virus or worm outbreak.
“Once you identify the strings, you can tell everyone, ‘If you see this, don’t let it through’,” explained Jacobs School computer science professor George Varghese, co-founder of NetSift, Inc., who has just finished a year-long stint at Cisco Systems Inc.
As the team worked on their “content sifting” technology, they began to identify worms and viruses not yet been flagged by network security companies.
“In some cases, we detected and identified worms and viruses a few hours before existing security vendors. In other cases, we had them a few days before,” said Singh.
“This large project, which took me from UCSD to NetSift and then Cisco, grew out of a thought that almost seems simple in hindsight. Working through the intricacies with George and Stefan was a thought provoking and enriching experience.” said Singh.
While Singh and several other TR35 winners for 2006 focus on Internet-related issues, this year’s TR35 list also includes researchers working in the fields of telecommunications, nanotechnology, biotechnology, computer hardware, software, transportation and energy research.
According to Jason Pontin, Editor-in-Chief of Technology Review: “The TR35 is an amazing group of people. Their accomplishments are likely to shape their fields for decades to come.”
The honorees are selected by the editors of the magazine in collaboration with a prestigious panel of judges from major institutions and corporations.
UCSD engineers and participants in Calit2 have now been honored in five of the six years when Technology Review selected outstanding young innovators: Calit2 new-media artist Natalie Jeremijenko appeared in the inaugural 1999 roster; then-bioengineering professor Sangeeta Bhatia and former bioengineering grad student Christophe Schilling -- who co-founded Genomatica with professor Bernhard Palsson -- in 2003; computer science professor Serge Belongie in 2004; and bioengineering professor Trey Ideker in 2005.
Sumeet Singh and other 2006 honorees will be featured September 27-28 during the 2006 Emerging Technologies Conference at MIT.
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Media Contacts
Media Contact: Daniel Kane, Jacobs School of Engineering -- 858-534-3262, dbkane@ucsd.edu