OMSCS Buzz S6E6: Ellen Zegura

Tuesday, May 19, 2026

On this episode, host Tanmay Shah chats with Dr. Ellen Zegura. She is a Regents Professor in the School of Computer Science at Georgia Tech, a Fellow of both the ACM and IEEE, and the recipient of Georgia Tech's highest faculty honor — the Class of 1934 Distinguished Professor Award. Over a 30-year career, she has shaped the internet's foundational architecture through topology modeling and Software-Defined Networking, pushed the limits of connectivity in disconnected corners of the world, and built an entirely new discipline around computing for social good. In this episode, you'll hear about her remarkable career arc, the hard lessons of doing technology work in the real world, and what it actually takes to make computing matter beyond the lab.

Segments

0:00	Cold open
1:13	Episode begins
2:10	Internship experience
7:20	PhD journey
11:17	Influential web in the 1990s
14:25	GT-ITM Network Generator Project; network topological structure
18:07	Olympics comes to Atlanta
23:10	Disruption-tolerant networks and message variance (discussion of origin of software-defined networking)
31:45	Development of the internet; what's stressing the internet?
38:26	Mobile revolution's effect on Georgia Tech; creation of schools under College of Computing
44:06	Computing for good and travels to Liberia
50:40	Role at the National Science Foundation (NSF)