Tom Leighton is the new CEO of Akamai Technologies, Inc., an Internet content delivery network based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was formerly the company’s chief scientist.

Leighton is also one of Akamai’s co-founders. It was during his earlier years at MIT, where he continues to serve as a professor of applied mathematics and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, when he developed algorithms to speed up the Internet. Subsequently, Akamai was founded in 1998.

Akamai is experiencing further growth as a cloud infrastructure services platform and is increasing its content delivery network, which currently consists of close to 120,000 servers in 80 countries. The company is also expanding into cyber security and wireless network traffic management.

Leighton was a member of President Obama’s Information Technology Advisory Committee from 2003-05, serving as chair of its Subcommittee on Cyber Security. He has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences. He holds numerous patents involving cryptography, digital rights management and algorithms for network applications. Leighton received his BSE in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton in 1978 and his Ph.D. in mathematics from MIT in 1981.