UW Computer Science Professor, founder of Nemean Networks, is Expert in Internet Traffic Measurement, Large Data Analytics and Internet Security
MADISON, WI – Broadcast Interactive Media (BIM), whose evolving suite of Web, video, and mobile publishing tools help increase client revenues by attracting more traffic and improving ad delivery, today announced that Paul Barford, PhD and Professor of Computer Sciences at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, has joined the company as Chief Scientist, a newly created position. Dr. Barford will direct the development and operation of a new BIM platform that assures its network of local publisher sites can identify and avoid invalid traffic which is now costing the online ad ecosystem over $10 billion in wasted ad spending.
While teaching at Wisconsin (Madison) Professor Barford was the founder of network security company NemeanNetworks, an Internet security company focused on commercializing next-generation intrusion detection technology. Nemean was acquired by Qualys (NASDAQ: QLS) in 2010. Dr. Barford is also founder and director of the Wisconsin Advanced Internet Laboratory, which receives funding from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Homeland Security, the Army Research Office and Cisco Systems. He was also part of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, a public transdisciplinary research institute and “skunkworks” focusing on the interfaces of computation, laboratory science, the humanities and entrepreneurship.
“I am exceedingly lucky to have Paul Barford join our team. He is an industry and academic leader in network security and data analytics,” says Timur Yarnall, CEO of BIM. “For more than 10 years we have been working with high demand local media and pure play publishers focused on interactive mobile, display, and video inventory. Since we have been seeing roughly 500 million monthly impressions from over 40 million unique visitors we have been able to see a wide swath of traffic and identify the kinds of irregularities that point to fraud for both brands and publishers.”
Dr. Barford’s research interests have been in measurement of Internet traffic and topological structure; large data analytics and Internet security including detection of traffic anomalies and identification of malicious attacks and intrusions. More recently, his interests have turned to challenges in online advertising. Dr. Barford was a visiting professor at the University of Cambridge, an EPSRC Visiting Fellow in 2011 and has been a consultant on Internet measurement and security issues to a number of companies. He also served as Chief Scientist at Qualys.
Author of many highly-cited research papers, Dr. Barford also served on numerous panels, organizing committees, and program committees (ACM SIGCOMM ’13 TPC co-chair, ACM SIGMETRICS ’10 TPC co-chair, and ACM IMC ’06 TPC chair). He had served as an associate editor for IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, on the board of directors of the National Lambda Rail, and on technical advisory boards of companies. He is an NSF CAREER award winner and senior member of the ACM and IEEE. Dr. Barford received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Boston University.
“I am very pleased to have a chance to work with the fantastic customer base, talented developers, and team at BIM, “ said Dr. Barford. “I’m certain that the application of big data analytics to our large network of publisher sites will yield immediate results.”
Broadcast Interactive Media (BIM) (www.broadcast-interactive.com
