Warning: this web page is woefully out-of-date.
Some parts of it haven't changed much since it was first created in 1994.

Hello! My name's Erik (spelled with a "k" and not with a "c", "ck", "ch", or "q"). I'm a Chief Systems Architect at Akamai Technologies, and taking time off (well, if 7+ years counts as "time off") from being a graduate student in Computer Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). I spend far too much time behind a computer screen, I procrastinate too much, and I like dark chocolate better than milk chocolate.

I have a partial listing of software projects that I've worked on over the years, as well as papers, stories, and essays. My resume is also available for your perusal.

I'm living near Davis Square in Somerville. I used to live in A-Entry of MacGregor. I grew up in Tiburon, Northern California, which is a small town just north of San Francisco in Marin County. My mom is a former mayor of Tiburon, although she's retired from the political life (for now). My father has worked in the field of telecommunications and network management.

I'm currently a Chief Systems Architect working for Akamai Technologies, a Cambridge-based company providing a Internet Content Delivery Network.

I completed my Master's thesis in Professor Kaashoek's Parallel and Distributed Operating Systems Group in the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science. For my thesis, I designed and implemented PAN, a high performance active network node that supports multiple mobile code systems. Although I'm now in the PhD program at MIT, I'm taking a few years off to work in the real world.

A few years ago, I helped found Fourth Planet, a software company which develops tools for the 3D visualization of dynamic systems and real-time data. I regretfully left the company to return to MIT to pursue my graduate studies.

For four summers I worked at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA. I worked in the Intelligent Mechanisms Lab in the Information Sciences Division. My projects included various things relating to virtual environments and telerobotics. While working there, I was the lead designer for the VEVI3 architecture which was a finalist and runner up for the 1996 NASA Software of the Year competition.

I'm a member of SIPB, the MIT Student Information Processing Board. SIPB is a group of students which provide support for computing on campus. I'm particularly interested in Linux, a freely redistributable version of UN*X that is available for Intel x86-based machines. I am a member of the XFree86 P9000 development team. What does this mean? I helped write and am now maintaining a freely redistributable driver to support X windows, using P9000-based video cards such as the Diamond Viper, on x86-based Unixes such as Linux.

The past few IAPs I've taught a two-day class called Introduction to UNIX Software Development.

To contact me, send email to nygren@mit.edu, or find me online. My PGP key is at the end of my .plan.

I have a Technician class amateur radio license, and you may be able to find me on the MIT UHF Repeater (W1XM) as KB1CXE.