Deborah Estrin (Ph.D. MIT, 1985; BSEE UCB, 1980) is a Professor of Computer Science at UCLA, holds the Jon Postel Chair in Computer Networks, and is Founding Director of the National Science Foundation funded Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS). CENS’ mission is to explore and develop innovative, end-to-end, distributed sensing systems, from ecosystems to human systems. Estrin’s earlier work addressed Internet protocol design and scaling, in particular, inter-domain and multicast routing. Since the late 90’s her work has focused on multi-disciplinary, experimental-systems research as applied to a variety of environmental monitoring challenges. Most recently this work includes participatory-sensing systems, at the personal and community level, leveraging the location, acoustic, image, and attached-sensor data streams increasingly available from mobile phones.

Estrin chaired a 1998 DARPA/ISAT study on sensor networks and a 2001 NRC study on Networked Embedded Computing which produced the report Embedded Everywhere. She served as a founding member of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) Advisory board, and is currently a member of the NRC Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB), and TTI/Vanguard. Estrin was selected as the first ACM-W Athena Lecturer in 2006, was awarded the Anita Borg Institute’s Women of Vision Award for Innovation in 2007, and was inducted as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007.