John P. Morgridge Professor Emeritus
Computer Sciences Department
University of Wisconsin
1210 W. Dayton St.
Madison, WI 53706-1685
Telephone: (608) 239-6263
Email: lhl@cs.wisc.edu
CS640 Introduction to Computer Networks and CS740 Advanced Computer Networks
Connectivity Maps
Vita
Lawrence H. Landweber is the John P. Morgridge Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin - Madison where until July 2000 he held the John P Morgridge Chair. He joined the Wisconsin Computer Science Department in 1967, serving as Chairman during 1977-79 and 1987-90. During 2002-2006 he was Senior Advisor to the Assistant Director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering of the US National Science Foundation. From 2000 to 2008, Dr. Landweber was a member of the Board of Internet2 and Chair of its Network Research Council. He has been Chairman of the Board, President and Vice President for Education of the Internet Society and a member of the Computer Research Association Board. He is a Fellow of the ACM and in 2005 received the IEEE Award on International Communication. He received a B.S. in mathematics from Brooklyn College and a Ph.D. in computer science from Purdue University.
Early in his career, Dr. Landweber worked on monadic second order logic / infinite games, complexity theory and Petri nets, serving as Chair of the ACM Special Interest Group on Automata and Computability (SIGACT). Since 1977, he has worked on computer networks.
Dr. Landweber's first networking project, TheoryNet, involved an email system for theoretical computer scientists. In 1979, he proposed and later led the CSNET (Computer Science Network) project. The goal of CSNET was a network for all US university, industry and government computer research groups. Funded by NSF in 1981, CSNET provided an early large-scale community network based on Internet technology. Landweber served as Chair of the project during its implementation phase and also led a technical project that designed and implemented an early network-based directory system, "the CSNET nameserver." By 1984, over 180 university, industrial, and government computer science departments were participating in CSNET.
Later, he worked with NSF on the development of the NSFNET. From 1987 to 1992, he led the Wisconsin component of the NSF-DARPA Gigabit Testbed Project. He currently participates in the NSF-funded 100x100 project, whose goal is to redesign the Internet to accommodate 100 million homes connected at 100 Mbps.
Dr. Landweber has been a leader in the development of the international academic/research Internet. In the 1980s he helped establish the first network gateways between the US and many countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America and also advised these countries on the development of their national networks. Much of this progress resulted from a series of International NetWorkshops which he organized beginning in 1982. These NetWorkshops were attended by individuals who were pioneering the development of national networks in their countries.
In the 1990s he helped initiate the Internet Society's Workshops for Developing Countries. These workshops were a key factor in the spread of the Internet to developing countries. Later he collaborated on the plan for what became the USAID Leland Initiative, the program that has played a major role in bringing the Internet to Africa. While President of the Internet Society, he initiated the ISOC proposal to revise the governance of the Domain Name System and assisted in the formation of ICANN.
He has been a member of the Computer Research Association Board of Directors, the CCIRN, the Coordinating Committee on Intercontinental Research Networks, the Office of Technology Assessment Advisory Panel on Information Technology and Research, three NSF division scientific advisory committees, and National Research Council committees on Computer-Computer Communication Protocols, The Future of the NREN, and Information Technology Strategy for the Library of Congress.
Among other projects led by Landweber have been one of the first Internet protocol implementations (1981-84, IBM VM systems) the first publicly available OSI protocol implementation (1984-87 - UNIX), implementation of the OSI network management protocol and its secure version (UNIX). large-scale validation of the Internet concept. CSNET was funded by NSF ($5 million for 5 years). Later, Landweber worked with NSF on the development of the NSFNET regional/backbone model, on the acceptable use policy, and on other policy issues.