Joe Touch is an independent consultant and also a Senior Distributed Systems Data Architect at the Aerospace Corporation, the latter where he supports proliferated LEO constellations, space backbone network architectures, satellite networking programs, cloud and ground systems, and quantum communications. He was previously Postel Center Director and Research Associate Professor at USC/ISI. He has a dual B.S. in biophysics and CS from the Univ. of Scranton, an MS in CS from Cornell, and a Ph.D. in CS from the Univ. of Pennsylvania. His interests include network and distributed systems architecture, virtual networks, optical computing, optical communication processing, quantum networking, and high-performance network security. He holds 5 US patents and published over 150 papers in conferences and journals. Joe is in Sigma Xi, an ACM Distinguished Scientist, and Senior Member of the IEEE and the OSA. He is active in the IETF in the Transport, Internet, and Security Areas, and served on numerous conference committees. He pioneered a "first principles approach to computer networkings" course based on his Recursive Network Architecture, which is under development as a textbook and has been taught at both USC and UCLA.
