Deborah Estrin

Deborah Estrin is the Robert V. Tishman ’37 Professor of Computer Science and Associate Dean for Impact at Cornell Tech, Cornell University. She is also a professor in the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science and Professor of Population Health Sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine. Estrin founded the Public Interest Technology Initiative (PiTech) at Cornell Tech, which promotes public impact as a core component of technology students' training and careers. Her current research focuses on digital health innovations that support patients and providers in optimizing clinical outcomes and quality of life, including emerging technologies to augment telemedicine and caregiving. Prior to joining Cornell in 2013, she was Founding Director of the NSF Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) at UCLA from 2002 to 2012, pioneering mobile and wireless systems to collect and analyze real-time data about the physical world. Earlier, she held faculty positions at the University of Southern California from 1986 to 2000, including at the Information Sciences Institute. Estrin co-founded the nonprofit Open mHealth in 2011 and has served as an Amazon Scholar since 2018, contributing to scientific advisory boards for mobile health startups.

Estrin received her B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1980, M.S. in 1982, and Ph.D. in 1985 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her influential publications include 'GHT: A Geographic Hash Table for Data-Centric Storage' (Ratnasamy et al., 2002, WSNA), 'Open mHealth Architecture: An Engine for Health Care Innovation' (Estrin and Sim, 2010, Science), and 'Recruitment Framework for Participatory Sensing Data Collections' (Reddy et al., 2010, Pervasive Computing). She has shaped the fields of wireless sensor networks, participatory sensing, and personal health data platforms. Major honors include the IEEE John von Neumann Medal (2022), MacArthur Fellowship (2018), IEEE Internet Award (2017), ACM Athena Lecturer Award (2006), Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Award for Innovation (2007), election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2007), National Academy of Engineering (2009), and National Academy of Medicine (2019), as well as honorary doctorates from EPFL (2008), Uppsala (2011), and Concordia (2023).

Professional Email: destrin@cornell.edu