Michael Schroeder

Michael David Schroeder is an American computer scientist. His areas of research include computer security, distributed systems, and operating systems, and he is perhaps best known as the co-inventor of the Needham–Schroeder protocol. In 2001 he co-founded the Microsoft Research Silicon Valley lab and was the assistant managing director until the lab was disbanded in 2014.

Early Life and Education

Born in 1945 in Richland, Washington, Schroeder completed his undergraduate studies at Washington State University before pursuing graduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned his PhD in 1972.

Career

Beginning in 1976, Schroeder held positions at MIT's EECS department, Xerox PARC, and the DEC Systems Research Center. At MIT he contributed to the Multics project, producing seminal work on security architecture for shared information systems.

In 1977, Schroeder and Roger Needham designed a new, unclassified computer network protocol for distributed authentication using a Key Distribution Center (KDC). This work became known as the Needham–Schroeder protocol and directly influenced the development of the Kerberos authentication scheme, which was later adopted by MIT's Project Athena.

Notable Work

Beyond the Needham–Schroeder protocol, Schroeder contributed to a broad range of systems research. He was involved in building Grapevine, a distributed system; the filesystem of Cedar; Topaz, a distributed operating system; Autonet, a local area network; and Pachyderm, a web-based email system. He is also a co-author of The Protection of Information in Computer Systems, a widely recognized work in the field of computer security.

In 2001, Schroeder co-founded the Microsoft Research Silicon Valley lab and served as its assistant managing director. The lab operated until it was disbanded in 2014.

Recognition

Schroeder has received numerous honors for his contributions to computer science and security. In 2004, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). In 2006, ACM SIGSAC presented him with its Outstanding Innovations Award, citing his technical contributions to computer and communication security for their lasting impact on both theory and commercial systems. In 2007, NIST and NSA jointly awarded him the National Computer Systems Security Award. The following year, ACM SIGOPS selected the paper Grapevine: An Exercise in Distributed Computing, which Schroeder co-authored, for its Hall of Fame Award, which recognizes the most influential operating systems papers in peer-reviewed literature.

Other Interests

Outside of computer science, Schroeder is a recognized authority on the American landscape painter Gilbert Munger (1837–1903). He maintains a web-based catalogue raisonné and archive of period documents related to Munger, and co-authored the book Gilbert Munger: Quest for Distinction (Afton Historical Society Press, 2003) with J. Gray Sweeney of Arizona State University.