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Print Edition StoriesMIT reports it has won the $100,000 Mellon Technology Award for its work on computer network authentication system Kerberos.
Vinton Cerf, chief evangelist at Google Inc., presented the award to MIT researchers Dan Geer, Tom Yu, Jerrold Grochow and Stephen Buckley at a ceremony in Washington.
Kerberos was invented in the 1980s as part of Project Athena, led by Steven Lerman, now MIT’s vice chancellor and dean for graduate education, and Jerry Saltzer. It has since been maintained and expanded by MIT’s information services and technology department under Grochow. MIT offers the software for free to higher education institutions.
In 2007, MIT formed the Kerberos Consortium to establish it as the universal authentication system for the world’s computer networks. The consortium includes Apple Inc., Google, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems Inc., the U.S. Department of Defense and NASA.
The Kerberos Consortium said it plans to use the $100,000 prize to increase the interoperability of Kerberos across platforms and devices.
The Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration, presented by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is given to researchers who demonstrate leadership, usually over an extended period of time, of one or more research projects.
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