Chase Cotton

Professor

About Chase Cotton

Chase Cotton (Ph.D. EE, UD, 1984; BS ME, UT Austin, 1975) is a successful researcher, carrier executive, product manager, consultant, and educator for the technologies used in Internet and data services in the carrier environment for over 30 years.
Beginning in the mid-80’s Dr. Cotton’s communications research in Bellcore’s Applied Research Area involved creating new algorithms and methods in bridging, multicast, many forms of packet-based applications including voice & video, traffic monitoring, transport protocols, custom VLSI for communications (protocol engines and Content Addressable Memories), and Gigabit networking. In the mid-90’s as the commercial Internet began to blossom, he transitioned to assist carriers worldwide as they started their Internet businesses including Internet Service Providers (ISPs), hosting and web services, and the first large scale commercial deployment of Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) for consumer broadband services.  In 2000, Dr. Cotton assumed research, planning, and engineering for Sprint’s global Tier 1 Internet provider, SprintLink, expanding and evolving the network significantly during his 8 year tenure. At Sprint his activities include leading a team that enabled infrastructure for the first large scale collection and analysis of Tier 1 backbone traffic, and twice set the Internet 2 Land Speed World Record on a commercial production network.
Since 2008, Dr. Cotton has been at the University of Delaware in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, initially as a visiting scholar, and later as a Senior Scientist, Professor of Practice, and Director of Delaware’s Center for Information and Communications Sciences (CICS). His research interests include cybersecurity and high-availability software systems with funding drawn from the NSF, ARL, CERDEC, JPMorgan Chase, and other industrial sponsors.  He currently is involved in the educational launch of a multi-faceted Cybersecurity initiative at UD where he is developing new security courses and degree programs including a minor and MS in Cybersecurity.
Dr. Cotton currently consults on communications and Internet architectures for many carriers and equipment vendors worldwide.