Radia specialties include network protocols, cryptography, and network security. She developed the technology for making network routing self-stabilizing, largely self-managing, and scalable.  She also invented the spanning tree algorithm, which transformed Ethernet from a technology that supported a few hundred nodes within a single building, to something that could support large networks. 

 

She also has made contributions in network security, including scalable data expiration, distributed algorithms despite malicious participants, DDOS prevention techniques, and user authentication. She is the author of the textbook “Interconnections” (about network layers 2 and 3) and coauthor of “Network Security” (applied cryptography).

 

She has been recognized with many industry honors including induction into the National Academy of Engineering, the Inventor Hall of Fame, and lifetime achievement awards from Usenix and SIGCOMM.  She has a PhD in computer science from MIT.