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Computer Science Colloquium - Rich Ward '89, Microsoft

Fri, January 12th, 2018
7:35 pm

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Microsoft Technical Fellow, Richard Ward ’89, will give a talk about his life and work with Microsoft. Snacks will be served and Computer Science majors can receive colloquium credit.

Richard Ward is a Technical Fellow, leading the Enterprise and Security team for the Microsoft Windows and Devices Group. There, he oversees the engineering teams responsible for the security of the Windows platform, as well as the connection to the commercial customers and their requirements.

Previously, Ward ran the Storage and Networking team for Windows, responsible for the storage and networking technology within Windows. Prior to that, he spent five years in the Windows Phone team, running the Developer Platform team and before that, the Windows Mobile Labs team, a small team chartered with the incubation and prototyping of new technologies in the mobile space. Ward joined the Windows Mobile team after a long stay in Windows, where he headed the Core Architecture team, a team that watched over system-wide design issues for the next versions of Windows. In that role, he was focused on broad design issues such as state separation and management for both Windows components as well as applications.

Prior to that role, Ward was the lead security architect for Windows, working with a small team of others working to address the security needs of Microsoft customers. This role capped a long tenure in the security group, where he ran the security development team for Windows NT 3.5, Windows NT 4.0, and the core security group for Windows 2000.

During this time, Ward wrote the first SSL and Kerberos implementations for Microsoft, and oversaw the evolution of the original NTLM authentication protocol. Ward joined Microsoft in 1989 as a security developer for the LAN Manager product line.

Ward holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Williams College. Outside of Microsoft, he enjoys photography, cycling, music production, and spending time with his son.

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