Full Stack Journey 072: A Peek Inside The Comp Sci Ivory Tower

On today’s Full Stack Journey podcast we climb the ivory tower to get a glimpse of academic life in the field of networking and computer science with guest Dave Levin. Dr. Levin is Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland. His research focuses on networking and security, including measurement, cryptography, artificial intelligence, and economics. On today’s show we talk with Dr. Levin about his background and how he got into computing, research projects he’s working on, what life is like as an academic in the technology space, and his take on developments in the industry. Dr. Levin is a returning guest. We’ve had him on other shows in the Packet Pushers network to talk about DDoS attack techniques and alibi routing. Scott Lowe is away for this episode, so Drew Conry-Murray and Ethan Banks from the Packet Pushers step in as guest hosts. We discuss: * How Dr. Levin got interested in computers * The cutthroat world of professional tuba players * Differences between working in private industry and academics * What drives his and his students’ research * How his research gets funded * The need for open access to federally funded research * What AI can bring to computer science as well as its limitations * More Sponsor: AppDynamics AppDynamics is excited to introduce AppDynamics Cloud. Purpose-built to observe the full stack of cloud-native architectures at scale. Ingest and visualize all metrics, events, logs, and trace data across your entire technology landscape. Learn more and observe what matters at appdynamics.com/cloudtourpromo. Show Links: Dave Levin at University of Marlaynd @DistributedDave – Dave Levin on Twitter and Mastodon Heavy Networking 596: Weaponizing Firewalls And Middleboxes For DDoS Attacks – Packet Pushers Heavy Networking 488: Using Genetic Algorithms To Avoid Internet Censorship – Packet Pushers PQ 58: Alibi Routing With UMD’s Dave Levin – Packet Pushers