CSE alum Jennifer Rexford named provost at Princeton University

CSE alumna Jennifer Rexford (MSE PhD CSE 1993 1996) has been named as the next provost of Princeton University. Currently the Gordon Y.S. Wu Professor of Engineering and the Chair of Computer Science at Princeton, Rexford oversaw a period of extraordinary growth in the Department.

Her research focuses on computer networking, with the larger goal of making the Internet worthy of society’s trust. Prior to arriving to teach at Princeton, Rexford worked as a researcher at AT&T Labs for more than eight years, creating techniques for monitoring, traffic engineering and router configuration deployed in AT&T’s backbone networks.

In addition to her contributions to industry and academic research, Rexford pioneered successful initiatives to promote department growth and diversity within the field. Enrollment in the computer science program has increased by 456% since 2011, and gender diversity has increased to 40%. Rexford has served on the University’s Faculty Advisory Committee on Diversity. For the past three years, she has led an interdisciplinary data science faculty search committee responsible for hiring faculty who use machine learning and statistics as a lens for advancing scholarship in their individual disciplines, including those in the humanities and social sciences.

Rexford also helped launch and also facilitates the University’s Out in STEM group for faculty, staff and students. The group offers regular STEM gatherings where LGBTQIA+ undergraduate and graduate students across the STEM fields can meet.

Rexford earned a B.S.E. in electrical engineering at Princeton in 1991 and is a recipient of the Moses Taylor Pyne Honor Prize, Princeton University’s highest undergraduate honor. After receiving her PhD from Michigan, she worked for eight years at AT&T Labs before joining Princeton’s Department of Computer Science as a full professor in 2005. While at Michigan, she was advised by Kevin and Nancy O’Connor Professor of Computer Science Kang G. Shin.

She served as the chair of the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Data Communications (ACM SIGCOMM) from 2003 to 2007, and has served on the ACM Council, the board of the Computing Research Association, the advisory council of the Computer and Information Science and Engineering directorate at the National Science Foundation, and the Computing Community Consortium.

Rexford received the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award for outstanding young computer professional, the ACM Athena Lecturer Award, the NCWIT Harrold and Notkin Research and Graduate Mentoring Award, the ACM SIGCOMM award for lifetime contributions, and the IEEE Internet Award. She is an ACM Fellow, an IEEE Fellow, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Academy of Sciences.