CANDIDATE FOR DIRECTOR

Brian Noble

USENIX plays a unique role among professional computing societies by bringing together the best practitioners with top researchers. Unsurprisingly, this is both its biggest strength and most significant challenge. If elected to the Board, I will focus on maintaining this unique combination.

When these two communities meet, researchers are encouraged to solve hard problems that matter. Likewise, system administrators have the opportunity to hear about the latest advances from research—particularly the experiences of their peers who are early adopters of such technology.

Examples of successful cross-fertilization abound, but these successes require our continued interaction. By their nature, these two communities have different needs, and look to our conferences to meet these needs. Serving two masters in this way is difficult, but it is what makes USENIX special. I believe the Association must continue this focus at its conferences, while strengthening both the paper tracks and the tutorials.

Growing the Association is not easy, however. Over the past several years, attendance at some of our flagship conferences has dropped, and the financial picture is not as strong as it could be. Some of this can be attributed to economic woes, but the Association must still look carefully at its meetings to see how to make them as useful to our constituencies as possible. As the number of conferences sponsored by USENIX grows—and each individually becomes a success—it becomes more difficult to keep different audiences together.

As my involvement with USENIX has grown—from attendee to author, from committee member to program chair—I've learned to appreciate the unique balance between theory and practice that the Association offers. If elected, I look forward to the opportunity to give back to the Association in turn. To read more about me, see https://www.eecs.umich.edu/~bnoble.

Biography: Brian Noble is the Morris Wellman Faculty Development Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan. His research interests include mobile computing, peer-to-peer storage, and usable security systems. He received the Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1998, and holds a B.S. in EECS from the University of California, Berkeley. He has served on a number of program committees, and was the Program Chair of the USENIX Annual Technical Conference in 2003.

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