astronomy

Scott Shenker

Scott Shenker is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Scott Shenker rather than just read about it. In short: Scott J. Shenker (born January 24, 1956) is an American computer scientist and professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley.

Key takeaways

Scott Shenker belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Scott Shenker to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Scott Shenker from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Scott J. Shenker (born January 24, 1956) is an American computer scientist and professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also the leader of the Extensible Internet Group at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, California. Over his career, Shenker has made research contributions in the areas of energy-efficient processor scheduling, resource sharing, and software-defined networking. In 2002, he received the SIGCOMM Award in recognition of his "contributions to Internet design and architecture, to fostering research collaboration, and as a role model for commitment and intellectual rigor in networking research". Shenker is an ISI Highly Cited researcher. According to Google Scholar he is one of the five highest-ranked American computer scientists, with total citations exceeding 100,000.

Biography Shenker received his Sc.B. in physics from Brown University in 1978, and his PhD in physics from University of Chicago in 1983. In 2007, he received an honorary doctorate from the same university. After working as a postdoctoral associate at Cornell University, he joined the research staff at Xerox PARC. He left PARC in 1998 to help found the AT&T Center for Internet Research, which was later renamed the ICSI Center for Internet Research (ICIR). In 1995, Shenker contributed to the field of energy-efficient processor scheduling, co-authoring a paper on deadline-based scheduling with Frances Yao and Alan Demers. From 1995 to 2001, while working at Xerox PARC and later ICSI, he was an adjunct associate professor at the University of Southern California. In 2002, Shenker joined the Berkeley faculty and received the SIGCOMM Award in recognition of his "contributions to Internet design and architecture, to fostering research collaboration, and as a role model for commitment and intellectual rigor in networking research". In 2006, he received the IEEE Internet Award for "contributions towards an understanding of resource sharing on the Internet." He is a Fellow of the ACM and IEEE and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. In 2016 he became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the brother of string theorist Stephen Shenker. Shenker is a leader in the movement toward software-defined networking (SDN). He is the co-founder of the Open Networking Foundation and of Nicira Networks. In June 2021, Berkeley announced that Shenker had donated $25 million toward the university's computing and data science initiatives, making him and colleague Ion Stoica two of Berkeley's top benefactors. In late 2025, he was announced by the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) as the recipient of the 2026 IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal. He is one of the inventors of dominant resource fairness.

Publications (selection) H. Li, A. Ghodsi, M. Zaharia, S. Shenker, and I. Stoica, "Tachyon: Reliable, Memory Speed Storage for Cluster Computing Frameworks," in ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing, 2014. M. Zaharia, T. Das, H. Li, T. Hunter, S. Shenker, and I. Stoica, "Discretized Streams: Fault-Tolerant Streaming Computation at Scale," in ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, 2013. R. S. Xin, J. Rosen, M. Zaharia, M. Franklin, S. Shenker, and I. Stoica, "Shark: SQL and Rich Analytics at Scale," EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley, Tech. Rep. UCB/EECS-2012-214, Nov. 2012. J. Feigenbaum and S. Shenker, "Distributed algorithmic mechanism design: Recent results and future directions," in Proc. 6th Intl. Workshop on Discrete Algorithms and Methods for Mobile Computing and Communications, New York, NY: ACM Press, 2002, pp. 1–13. S. Ratnasamy, P. Francis, M. Handley, R. M. Karp, and S. Shenker, "A scalable content-addressable network," in Proc. ACM SIGCOMM 2001 Conf.: Applications, Technologies, Architectures, and Protocols for Computer Communications, New York, NY: The Association for Computing Machinery, Inc., 2001, pp. 161–172. R. Braden, D. Clark, and S. Shenker, "Integrated Services in the Internet Architecture: An Overview," Internet Engineering Task Force, Tech. Rep. RFC 1633, June 1994. A. Demers, S. Keshav, and S. Shenker, "Analysis and simulation of a fair queueing algorithm," in Proc. SIGCOMM '89 Symp. on Communications Architectures and Protocols, New York, NY: ACM Press, 1989, pp. 1–12. A. Demers, D. Greene, C. Hauser, W. Irish, J. Larson, S. Shenker, H. Sturgis, D. Swinehart, and D. Terry, "Epidemic algorithms for replicated database maintenance," in Proc. 6th Annual ACM Symp. on Principles of Distributed Computing, F. B. Schneider, Ed., New York, NY: ACM Press, 1987, pp. 1–12.

References

External links Scott Shenker at icsi.berkeley.edu Scott Shenker publications indexed by Google Scholar

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Scott Shenker

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Scott Shenker claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Scott Shenker before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Scott Shenker ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Scott Shenker

In research: Scott Shenker appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Scott Shenker in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Scott Shenker is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1956 births, American computer scientists, Brown University alumni, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Scott Shenker outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Scott Shenker in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Scott Shenker means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Scott Shenker out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Scott Shenker in simple terms?

Scott J. Shenker (born January 24, 1956) is an American computer scientist and professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley.

Why does Scott Shenker matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Scott Shenker?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Scott Shenker.