Krishan Sabnani

A Homewood Distinguished Professor, Krishan Sabnani is a networking researcher who has made many seminal contributions to internet infrastructure design, protocol design, and wireless networks. He currently serves as chair of the Whiting School of Engineering Awards Committee.

Sabnani is known for his breakthrough in internet redesign, in which he separated control functions and complex software from the forwarding portions on internet routers. This made it possible for forwarding technologies (e.g., different link layers and switching protocols) to evolve and be deployed independently from control protocols (e.g., routing, security). His contribution is a direct precursor to the current software-defined networking revolution.

Sabnani’s influence in the field of networking research is underscored by his membership in the National Academy of Engineering and his fellowship National Academy of Inventors; he is also a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the ACM, and Bell Labs. His numerous accolades—among them the IEEE Communications Society’s 1991 Leonard G. Abraham Prize, the 2005 IEEE Eric E. Sumner Award, the 2005 IEEE Computer Society’s W. Wallace McDowell Award, and the 2005 Distinguished Alumni Award from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi—are a testament to his significant contributions to the field. Sabnani was also inducted into the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014 and has received three Thomas Alva Edison Patent Awards from the Research & Development Council of New Jersey.

Sabnani received his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from IIT Delhi and completed his PhD in reliable multicasting at Columbia University. Upon his graduation from Columbia in 1981, Krishan joined Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey—first as a technical staff member, then as a department head, and finally as vice president of networking research. Sabnani retired from Bell Labs in 2017 and was the first person to be appointed an ambassador-at-large before joining the Johns Hopkins University in 2022.