Hari Balakrishnan

Hari Balakrishnan is the Fujitsu Professor of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence in the EECS Department at MIT, where he co-leads the Networks and Mobile Systems Group at CSAIL. He is known for his work on overlay networks and distributed hash tables (e.g., RON and the Chord distributed hash table), mobile and sensor computing (e.g., Cricket and CarTel), congestion control and wireless transport (e.g., the Congestion Manager, Remy, and Copa), Internet architecture and routing (e.g., rcc), and data management systems (e.g., the Aurora/Borealis stream-processing systems and CryptDB). His current focus is using AI to design and optimize computer systems (Glia, Savaal). One of the most-cited authors in Computer Science with over 150k citations, several ideas from his research have influenced research, standards, and industry.

His research has had commercial impact. For example, based on the CarTel project, he co-founded Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT), now the world’s largest telematics provider having protected over 70 million drivers across 25 countries and helped prevent more than 100,000 crashes (as of 2026). He also co-founded StreamBase (from Aurora/Borealis, acquired by TIBCO), and was a founding advisor to Meraki (acquired by Cisco) and Sandburst (acquired by Broadcom). In June 2025 he co-founded a stealth-mode startup based on research on agentic AI systems.

His honors include the Marconi Prize (2023), the ACM SIGCOMM Award (2021), the IEEE Koji Kobayashi Award (2021), the Infosys Prize (2020), six test-of-time awards, the MIT Edgerton Prize, and election to the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has mentored 45 PhD students (35 as advisor) and 10 post-docs, who have gone on to positions as faculty members at leading universities and/or leaders in industry.

Projects → Papers → Selected Talks →

• Agentic AI for Systems Design — LLM-based multi-agent systems that design, test, and optimize computer systems, reaching expert-level designs in hours instead of months.
• Savaal — a concept-driven question-generation system that turns papers, textbooks, and lecture material into deep quizzes.
• CityMesh — a decentralized city-scale Wi-Fi mesh that keeps residents connected when internet infrastructure fails.

Past Projects → Papers → Selected Talks →

Courses on computer systems, networks, IoT and mobile computing, undergrad research and communication, communication systems, and cloud computing.

Current PhD students: James Lynch, Pantea Karimi, Kimia Noorbakhsh, Ziqian (Charlie) Liu, Om Chabra, Snehadeep (Deep) Gayen.

Graduated PhDs, Postdocs, and Masters Students →

• Co-founder, Chairman, and CTO, Cambridge Mobile Telematics. CMT, the company that grew out of our CarTel project, is now the world’s largest telematics company, with a mission to make the world’s roads and drivers safer. CMT’s DriveWell platform and mobility foundation models turn IoT and smartphone sensor data into risk models, crash detectors, claims insights, and behavioral modifiers. These capabilities are used by insurers, mobility providers, automakers, and public-sector agencies in over 25 countries, benefiting over 70 million users since its inception. CMT’s technology has helped prevent more than 100,000 crashes. A profitable, growth-stage company headquartered on the edge of the MIT campus, CMT employs 450 people. CMT was created without venture funding in 2010, subsequently raising $500M from SoftBank in 2019 and $350M from TPG and Allianz in 2026.
• Advisor, Meraki Networks (acquired by Cisco), 2006–2012. Meraki began by commercializing wireless mesh networking from MIT's Roofnet project, then pioneered cloud-based remote management of wireless access points.
• Co-founder, StreamBase Systems (acquired by TIBCO), 2003–2008. StreamBase commercialized the Aurora and Medusa stream-processing systems from MIT, Brown, and Brandeis, with particular success in financial services.
• Consultant and algorithm architect, Sandburst (acquired by Broadcom), 2000–2003. Developed algorithms and patents for rate guarantees and overload protection, switch scheduling, and packet classification.

• Education: PhD, UC Berkeley, 1998; BTech, IIT Madras, 1993; High school, KVIIT Madras, 1989.
• My sister, Hamsa Balakrishnan, is the William E. Leonhard Professor of AeroAstro and Associate Dean of Engineering at MIT whose research is in control and optimization algorithms for large-scale cyber-physical infrastructures, with an emphasis on air transportation.
• My mother, Radha Balakrishnan, and father, V. Balakrishnan, are both theoretical physicists. My father has over 240 lectures on college and high-school physics available on YouTube.
• My academic ancestry.