biography

Steven D. Gribble joined Google Inc. in 2013. He is a distinguished engineer, and he builds host-side networking, hardware offloads, and software-defined networking systems that make Google’s planetary scale networks available, debuggable, and safe to operate.

Steve has co-founded two companies. In 2006, Steve co-founded SkyTap, which provides cloud-based software development, test, and deployment platforms. In 1996 Steve co-founded ProxiNet, Inc., a company that built graphical web browsers for wireless Palm Pilot PDAs that offload content rendering and optimization to scalable cloud infrastructure. ProxiNet was acquired by Pumatech in 1999.

Before joining Google, Steve was a computer scientist and full professor in the University of Washington’s Department of Computer Science & Engineering. Steve joined the department in November of 2000 after receiving his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley under Professor Eric Brewer. Steve’s research interests include all topics systems-related, such as scalable Internet infrastructure and services, distributed systems, virtual machine monitors, operating systems, and systems security topics like detecting and defending against malware. He has authored 40+ peer-reviewed research publications and he has graduated seven Ph.D. students.

He received his B.Sc. in Computer Science and Physics from the University of British Columbia in 1995 and his M.S. in Computer Science from UC Berkeley in 1997. He is an ACM and USENIX member. Steve is a recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award, and the Torode Family Endowed Career Development Professorship in Computer Science. Steve has completed a number of MOOCs, including a deep learning nanodegree from Udacity, machine learning from Coursera, and computational investing from Coursera.

Steve is an endurance athlete. He has completed five Ironman triathlons, including the 2007 Kona Ironman world championship race, and many olympic and half-iron distance races. From time to time, Steve will go on multi-day cycling adventures, including tours of Banff and Jasper, Crater Lake, Yellowstone, and Utah. Steve is also an enthusiastic, but terrible, longboard surfer.