CV

My CV is available as a PDF, or as summarized below.

Education

• BA in Computer Science, Williams College, 2001
• MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine, University of Cambridge, 2008
  (Note: all work for the MPhil was completed in 2003, but I did not formally receive my degree until a ceremony in 2008.)
• PhD in Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania, 2009

Academic Positions

• 2022–2023 (Interim), 2024–present, Associate Dean for Research, Cornell University
• 2021–present, Professor, Cornell University
• 2016–2021, Associate Professor, Cornell University
• 2010–2016, Assistant Professor, Cornell University
• 2009–2010, Postdoctoral Researcher, Princeton University

Visiting Positions

• 2023–2024, Visiting Professor, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
• 2016–2017, Visiting Assistant Professor, Stanford University

Industry Positions

• 2023–present, Visiting Faculty, Jane Street
• 2019–2023, Platform Architect, Intel
• 2016–2019, Principal Research Engineer, Barefoot Networks

Awards & Fellowships

• 2023 ACM SIGPLAN Robin Milner Award
• 2018 ACM SIGCOMM Rising Star Award
• 2013 National Science Foundation CAREER Award
• 2012 Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship
• 2004 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
• 2001 Herschel Smith Fellowship

Paper Awards

• 2023 Distinguished Paper Award, ACM SIGPLAN OOPSLA
• 2021 Most Influential Paper, ACM SIGPLAN ICFP
• 2020 Best Paper Award, ACM SIGCOMM CoNEXT
• 2020 Distinguished Paper Award, ACM SIGPLAN POPL
• 2019 Best Student Paper Award, ACM SIGCOMM
• 2018 Best Paper Award, USENIX NSDI
• 2016 ACM SIGPLAN Research Highlight
• 2015 Most Influential Paper, ACM SIGPLAN POPL
• 2013 Community Award, USENIX NSDI

University Awards

• 2021 Research Excellence Award, Bowers College of Computing and Information Science, Cornell University
• 2018 James and Mary Tien Teaching Award, College of Engineering, Cornell University
• 2016 Research Excellence Award, College of Engineering, Cornell University
• 2013 Michael Tien ‘72 Teaching Award, College of Engineering, Cornell University

Publications

• Andy Myers, Brian Nigito, and Nate Foster. Network Design Considerations for Trading Systems. In HotNets 2024.
• Eric Campbell, Hossein Hojjat, and Nate Foster. Computing Precise Control Interface Specifications. In PACMPL (OOPSLA 2) 2024.
• Mark Moeller, Jules Jacobs, Oliver Bélanger, David Darais, Cole Schlesinger, Steffen Smolka, Nate Foster, and Alexandra Silva. KATch: A Fast Symbolic Verifier for NetKAT. In PACMPL (PLDI) 2024.
• Mark Moeller, Thomas Wiener, Alaia Solko-Brelin, Caleb Koch, Nate Foster, and Alexandra Silva. Automata Learning with an Incomplete Teacher. In ECOOP 2023.
• Anshuman Mohan, Yunhe Liu, Nate Foster, Tobias Kappé, and Dexter Kozen. Formal Abstractions for Packet Scheduling. In OOPSLA 2023.
• Fabian Ruffy, Jed Liu, Prathima Kotikalapudi, Vojtech Havel, Hanneli Tavante, Rob Sherwood, Vladyslav Dubina, Volodymyr Peschanenko, Anirudh Sivaraman, and Nate Foster. P4Testgen: An Extensible Test Oracle For P4-16. In SIGCOMM 2023.
• Sundararajan Renganathan, Benny Rubin, Hyojoon Kim, Pier Luigi Ventre, Carmelo Cascone, Daniele Moro, Charles Chan, Nick McKeown, and Nate Foster. Hydra: Effective Runtime Network Verification. In SIGCOMM 2023.
• Rudy Peterson, Eric Campbell, John Chen, Natalie Isak, Calvin Shyu, Ryan Doenges, Parisa Ataei, and Nate Foster. P4Cub: A Little Language for Big Routers. In CPP 2023.
• Yunhe Liu, Nate Foster, and Fred Schneider. Causal Network Telemetry. In EuroP4 2022.
• Shrutarshi Basi, Nate Foster, James Grimmelman, James Grimmelman, Shan Parikh, and Ryan Richardson. A Programming Language for Future Interests. In YJoLT 2022.
• Ryan Donges, Tobias Kappé, John Sarracino, Nate Foster, and Greg Morrisett. Leapfrog: Certified Equivalence for Protocol Parsers. In PLDI 2022.
• Matthias Eichholz, Eric Campbell, Matthias Krebs, Nate Foster, and Mira Mezini. Dependently-Typed Data Plane Programming. In POPL 2022.
• Eric Hayden Campbell, William T. Hallahan, Priya Srikumar, Carmelo Cascone, Jed Liu, Vignesh Ramamurthy, Hossein Hojjat, Ruzica Piskac, Robert Soulé, and Nate Foster. Avenir: Managing Data Plane Diversity with Control Plane Synthesis. In USENIX NSDI 2021.
• Ryan Doenges, Mina Tahmasbi Arashloo, Santiago Bautista, Alexander Chang, Newton Ni, Samwise Parkinson, Rudy Peterson, Alaia Solko-Breslin, Amanda Xu, and Nate Foster. Petr4: Formal Foundations for P4 Data Planes. In PACM (POPL) 2021.
• Nate Foster, Nick McKeown, Jennifer Rexford, Guru Parulkar, Larry Peterson, and Oguz Sunay. Using Deep Programmability to Put Network Owners in Control. In SIGCOMM CCR 2020.
• Theo Jepsen, Ali Fattaholmanan, Masoud Moshref, Nate Foster, Antonio Carzaniga, and Robert Soule. Forwarding and Routing with Packet Subscriptions. In CoNEXT 2020.
• Hardik Soni, Myriana Rifai, Praveen Kumar, Ryan Doenges, and Nate Foster. Composing Dataplane Programs with μP4. In SIGCOMM 2020.
• Steffen Smolka, Nate Foster, Justin Hsu, Tobias Kappé, Dexter Kozen, and Alexandra Silva. Guarded Kleene Algebra with Tests: Verification of Uninterpreted Programs in Nearly Linear Time. In PACMPL (POPL) 2020.
• Christian Skalka, John Ring, David Darias, Minseok Kwon, Sahil Gupta, Kyle Diller, Steffen Smolka, and Nate Foster. Proof Carrying Network Code. In CCS 2019.
• Eugene Bagdasaryan, Griffin Berlstein, Jason Waterman, Eleanor Birrell, Nate Foster, Fred B. Schneider, and Deborah Estrin. Ancile: Enhancing Privacy for Ubiquitous Computing with Use-Based Privacy. In WPES 2019.
• Matthias Eichholz, Eric Campbell, Nate Foster, Guido Salvaneschi, and Mira Mezini. How to Avoid Making a Billion-Dollar Mistake: Type-Safe Data Plane Programming with SafeP4. In ECOOP 2019.
• Jonathan DiLorenzo, Kathryn Mancini, Kathleen Fisher, and Nate Foster. TxForest: A DSL for Concurrent Data Stores. In APLAS 2019.
• Praveen Kumar, Nandita Dukkipati, Nathan Lewis, Yi Cui, Yaogong Wang, Chonggang Li, Valas Valancius, Jake Adriaens, Steve Gribble, Nate Foster, and Amin Vahdat. PicNIC: Predictable Virtualized NIC. In SIGCOMM 2019.
• Steffen Smolka, Praveen Kumar, Nate Foster, Justin Hsu, Dexter Kozen, and Alexandra Silva. Scalable Verification of Probabilistic Networks. In PLDI 2019.
• Tom Magrino, Jed Liu, Nate Foster, Johannes Gehrke, and Andrew C. Myers. Efficient, Consistent Distributed Computation with Predictive Treaties. In EuroSys 2019.
• Theo Jepsen, Masoud Moshref, Antonio Carzaniga, Nate Foster, and Robert Soule. Packet Subscriptions for Programmable ASICs. In HotNets 2018.
• Jed Liu, William Hallahan, Cole Schlesinger, Milad Sharif, Jeongkeun Lee, Robert Soule, Han Wang, Cualin Cacscaval, Nick McKeown, and Nate Foster. p4v: Practical Verification for Programmable Data Planes. In SIGCOMM 2018.
• Theo Jepsen, Masoud Moshref, Antonio Carzaniga, Nate Foster, and Robert Soule. Life in the Fast Lane: A Line-Rate Linear Road. In SOSR 2018.
• Praveen Kumar, Chris Yu, Yang Yuan, Nate Foster, Robert Kleinberg, and Robert Soule. YATES: Rapid Prototyping for Traffic Engineering Systems. In SOSR 2018.
• Praveen Kumar, Yang Yuan, Chris Yu, Nate Foster, Robert Kleinberg, Petr Lapukhov, Chiun Lin Lim, and Robert Soule. Semi-Oblivious Traffic Engineering: The Road Not Taken. In NSDI 2018.
• Xin Jin, Xiaozhou Li, Haoyu Zhang, Nate Foster, Jeongkeun Lee, Robert Soule, Changhoon Kim, and Ion Stoica. NetChain: Scale-Free Sub-RTT Coordination. In NSDI 2018.
• Xin Jin, Xiaozhou Li, Haoyu Zhang, Robert Soule, Jeongkeun Lee, Nate Foster, Changhoon Kim, and Ion Stoica. NetCache: Balancing Key-Value Stores with Fast In-Network Caching. In SOSP 2017.
• Shrutarshi Basu, Nate Foster, Hossein Hojjat, Paparao Palacharla, Christian Skalka, and Xi Wang. Life on the Edge: Unraveling Policies into Configurations. In ANCS 2017.
• Han Wang, Robert Soulé, Huynh Tu Dang, Ki Suh Lee, Vishal Shrivastav, Nate Foster, and Hakim Weatherspoon. P4FPGA: A Rapid Prototyping Framework for P4. In SOSR 2017.
• Steffen Smolka, Praveen Kumar, Nate Foster, Dexter Kozen, and Alexandra Silva. Cantor Meets Scott: Semantic Foundations for Probabilistic Networks. In POPL 2017.
• Jonathan DiLorenzo, Richard Zhang, Erin Menzies, Kathleen Fisher, and Nate Foster. Incremental Forest: A DSL for Efficiently Managing Filestores. In ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Languages, Systems, and Applications (OOPSLA), Amsterdam, Netherlands 2016.
• Hossein Hojjat, Phillip Reummer, Jedidiah McClurg, Pavol Cerny, and Nate Foster. Optimizing Horn Solvers for Network Repair. In FMCAD 2016.
• Pavol Cerny, Nate Foster, Nilesh Jagnik, and Jedidiah McClurg. Consistent Network Updates in Polynomial Time. In DISC 2016.
• Jedidiah McClurg, Hossein Hojjat, Nate Foster, and Pavol Cerny. Event-Driven Network Programming. In PLDI 2016.
• Karla Saur, Joseph Collard, Nate Foster, Arjun Guha, Laurent Vanbever, and Michael Hicks. Safe and Flexible Controller Upgrades for SDNs. In SOSR 2016.
• Haoxian Chen, Nate Foster, Jake Silverman, Michael Whittaker, Brandon Zhang, and Rene Zhang. Felix: Implementing Traffic Measurement on End Hosts Using Program Analysis. In SOSR 2016.
• Nate Foster, Dexter Kozen, Konstantinos Mamouras, Mark Reitblatt, and Alexandra Silva. Probabilistic NetKAT. In ESOP 2016.
• Nikolaj Bjorner, Nate Foster, Philip Brighten Godfrey, and Pamela Zave. Formal Foundations for Networking (Dagstuhl Seminar 15071). In Dagstuhl Reports 2015.
• Steffen Smolka, Spiridon Eliopoulos, Nate Foster, and Arjun Guha. A Fast Compiler for NetKAT. In ICFP 2015.
• Sudip Roy, Lucja Kot, Gabriel Bender, Bailu Ding, Hossein Hojjat, Christoph Koch, Nate Foster, and Johannes Gehrke. The Homeostasis Protocol: Avoiding Transaction Coordination Through Program Analysis. In SIGMOD 2015.
• Jedidiah McClurg, Hossein Hojjat, Pavol Cerny, and Nate Foster. Efficient Synthesis of Network Updates. In PLDI 2015.
• Nate Foster, Dexter Kozen, Mae Milano, Alexandra Silva, and Laure Thompson. A Coalgebraic Decision Procedure for NetKAT. In POPL 2015.
• Robert Soul'e, Shrutarshi Basu, Parisa Jalili Marandi, Fernando Pedone, Robert Kleinberg, Emin Gun Sirer, and Nate Foster. Merlin: A Language for Provisioning Network Resources. In CoNEXT 2014.
• Martin Casado, Nate Foster, and Arjun Guha. Abstractions for Software-Defined Networks. In CACM 2014.
• Carolyn Jane Anderson, Nate Foster, Arjun Guha, Jean-Baptiste Jeannin, Dexter Kozen, Cole Schlesinger, and David Walker. NetKAT: Semantic Foundations for Networks. In POPL 2014.
• Robert Soule, Shrutarshi Basu, Robert Kleinberg, Emin Gun Sirer, and Nate Foster. Managing the Network with Merlin. In HotNets 2013.
• Andrew Noyes, Todd Warszawski, Pavol Cerny, and Nate Foster. Toward Synthesis of Network Updates. In SYNT Workshop 2013.
• Laurent Vanbever, Joshua Reich, Theophilus Benson, Nate Foster, and Jennifer Rexford. HotSwap: Correct and Efficient Controller Upgrades for Software-Defined Networks. In HotSDN 2013.
• Mark Reitblatt, Marco Canini, Arjun Guha, and Nate Foster. FatTire: Declarative Fault Tolerance for Software-Defined Networks. In HotSDN 2013.
• Arjun Guha, Mark Reitblatt, and Nate Foster. Machine-Verified Network Controllers. In PLDI 2013.
• Christopher Monsanto, Joshua Reich, Nate Foster, Jennifer Rexford, and David Walker. Composing Software Defined Networks. In NSDI 2013.
• Nate Foster, Arjun Guha, Mark Reitblatt, Alec Story, Michael J. Freedman, Naga Praveen Katta, Christopher Monsanto, Joshua Reich, Jennifer Rexford, Cole Schlesinger, David Walker, and Rob Harrison. Languages for software-defined networks. In IEEE Communications Magazine 2013.
• Mark Reitblatt, Nate Foster, Jennifer Rexford, Cole Schlesinger, and David Walker. Abstractions for Network Update. In SIGCOMM 2012.
• Stephen Gutz, Alec Story, Cole Schlesinger, and Nate Foster. Splendid Isolation: A Slice Abstraction for Software-Defined Networks. In HotSDN 2012.
• Nate Foster, Kazutaka Matsuda, and Janis Voigtlander. Three Complementary Approaches to Bidirectional Programming. In Spring School on Generic and Indexed Programming (SSGIP) 2012.
• Christopher Monsanto, Nate Foster, Rob Harrison, and David Walker. A Compiler and Run-time System for Network Programs. In POPL 2012.
• Stephen Magill, Christopher M. Hayden, Michael Hicks, Nate Foster, and Jeffrey S. Foster. Specifying and Verifying the Correctness of Dynamic Software Updates. In VSTTE 2012.
• Nate Foster, Michael J. Freedman, Rob Harrison, Christopher Monsanto, Mark Reitblatt, Jennifer Rexford, Alec Story, and David Walker. Language Abstractions for Software-Defined Networks. In LADA Workshop 2012.
• Lonnie Princehouse, Nate Foster, and Ken Birman. A Pairwise Abstraction for Round-Based Protocols. In LADA Workshop 2012.
• Mark Reitblatt, Nate Foster, Jennifer Rexford, and David Walker. Consistent Updates for Software-Defined Networks: Change You Can Believe In!. In HotNets 2011.
• Nate Foster, Rob Harrison, Michael J. Freedman, Christopher Monsanto, Jennifer Rexford, Alec Story, and David Walker. Frenetic: A Network Programming Language. In ICFP 2011.
• Kathleen Fisher, Nate Foster, David Walker, and Kenny Q. Zhu. Forest: A Language and Toolkit for Programming With Filestores. In ICFP 2011.
• Nate Foster, Rob Harrison, Matthew L. Meola, Michael J. Freedman, Jennifer Rexford, and David Walker. Frenetic: A High-Level Langauge for OpenFlow Networks. In PRESTO Workshop 2010.
• John Nathan Foster. Bidirectional Programming Languages. In PhD Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania 2009.
• Davi M. J. Barbosa, Julien Cretin, Nate Foster, Michael Greenberg, and Benjamin C. Pierce. Matching Lenses: Alignment and View Update. In ICFP 2010.
• James Cheney, Stephen Chong, Nate Foster, Margo Seltzer, and Stijn Vansummeren. Provenance: A Future History. In Onward! 2009.
• Krzysztof Czarnecki, J. Nathan Foster, Zhenjiang Hu, Ralf Lammel, Andy Schurr, and James F. Terwilliger. Bidirectional Transformations: A Cross-Discipline Perspective. GRACE Meeting notes, state of the art, and outlook. In ICMT 2009.
• J. Nathan Foster, Benjamin C. Pierce, and Steve Zdancewic. Updatable Security Views. In CSF 2009.
• J. Nathan Foster, and Grigoris Karvounarakis. Provenance and Data Synchronization. In IEEE Data Engineering Bulletin 2007.
• J. Nathan Foster, Todd J. Green, and Val Tannen. Annotated XML: Queries and Provenance. In PODS 2008.
• Aaron Bohannon, J. Nathan Foster, Benjamin C. Pierce, Alexandre Pilkiewicz, and Alan Schmitt. Boomerang: Resourceful Lenses for String Data. In POPL 2008.
• J. Nathan Foster, Alexandre Pilkiewcz, and Benjamin C. Pierce. Quotient Lenses. In ICFP 2008.
• Mary Fernandez, Kathleen Fisher, J. Nathan Foster, Michael Greenberg, and Yitzhak Mandelbaum. A Generic Programming Toolkit for PADS/ML: First-Class Upgrades for Third-Party Developers. In PADL 2008.
• J. Nathan Foster, Ravi Konuru, Jerome Simeon, and Lionel Villard. An Algebraic Approach to XQuery View Maintenance. In PLAN-X 2008.
• J. Nathan Foster, Benjamin C. Pierce, and Alan Schmitt. A Logic Your Typechecker Can Count On: Unordered Tree Types in Practice. In PLAN-X 2007.
• J. Nathan Foster. Actions Louder Than Words? MSO-Definable Transductions. In Written Preliminary Exam II, UPenn CIS 2006.
• J. Nathan Foster, and Dimitrios Vytiniotis. A Theory of Featherweight Java in Isabelle/HOL. In Archive of Formal Proofs 2006.
• J. Nathan Foster, Benjamin C. Pierce, and Alan Schmitt. Harmony Programmer's Manual. In 2006.
• J. Nathan Foster, and Benjamin C. Pierce. Boomerang Programmer's Manual. In 2008.
• J. Nathan Foster. Harmony: A Generic Synchronization Framework for Heterogeneous, Replicated Data. In 2005.
• J. Nathan Foster, Michael B. Greenwald, Christian Kirkegaard, Benjamin C. Pierce, and Alan Schmitt. Exploiting Schemas in Data Synchronization. In Journal of Computer and System Sciences 2007.
• J. Nathan Foster. Exploiting Schemas in Data Synchronization. In 2005.
• J. Nathan Foster. Contexts, Boxes, and Names, Oh My!. In 2003.
• Brian E. Aydemir, Aaron Bohannon, Matthew Fairbairn, J. Nathan Foster, Benjamin C. Pierce, Peter Sewell, Dimitrios Vytiniotis, Geoffrey Washburn, Stephanie Weirich, and Steve Zdancewic. Mechanized Metatheory for the Masses: The POPLmark Challenge. In TPHOLS 2005.
• J. Nathan Foster, Michael B. Greenwald, Jonathan T. Moore, Benjamin C. Pierce, and Alan Schmitt. Combinators for Bidirectional Tree Transformations: A Linguistic Approach to the View Update Problem. In TOPLAS 2007.
• J. Nathan Foster, Michael B. Greenwald, Jonathan T. Moore, Benjamin C. Pierce, and Alan Schmitt. Combinators for Bidirectional Tree Transformations: A Linguistic Approach to the View Update Problem. In POPL 2005.
• Kim B. Bruce, and J. Nathan Foster. LOOJ: Weaving LOOM into Java. In ECOOP 2004.
• J N Foster. Indexicals and Belief Reports. In MPhil Thesis, Cambridge History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine 2003.
• John N Foster. Model Checking for a Functional Hardware Description Language. In Tripos Dissertation, Cambridge Computer Laboratory 2002.
• John N Foster. Rupiah: Towards an Expressive Static Type System for Java. In Senior Honors Thesis, Williams Computer Science 2001.