15 Facts About Robert Shostak

Robert Shostak is most noted academically for his seminal work in the branch of distributed computing known as Byzantine Fault Tolerance.

Robert Shostak is known for co-authoring the Paradox Database, and most recently, the founding of Vocera Communications, a company that makes wearable, Star Trek-like communication badges.

Robert Shostak has Erdos number 2 through his collaboration with Kenneth Kunen.

Robert Shostak received the Thoralf Skolem Award for "Deciding Combinations of Theories".

Robert Shostak is a brother of Seth Robert Shostak, who is Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute and who frequently appears on television and radio.

Robert Shostak was born in Arlington, Virginia, the son of Arthur and Bertha Shostak ; his father was an electrical engineer.

Robert Shostak studied mathematics and computer science at Harvard College, graduating in 1970 with high honors.

Robert Shostak continued at Harvard to earn his AM degree and Ph.

In collaboration with CSL's Richard L Schwartz and P Michael Melliar-Smith, Shostak implemented a semi-automatic theorem prover incorporating some of these decision procedures.

Robert Shostak formalized the problem mathematically and proved that for n faulty computers, no fewer than 3n+1 computers in total were needed for any algorithm that could guarantee consensus, or what he termed interactive consistency.

Robert Shostak devised an algorithm for n = 1, proving that four computers were sufficient using two rounds of message passing.

Robert Shostak was financed by Ben Rosen of Sevin Rosen.

Robert Shostak is founder of Vocera Communications, which he started in March, 2000.

Robert Shostak went public in 2012 and has a market capitalization of close to $1B as of this writing.

Robert Shostak served as CTO and chief architect until he retired in 2013, and was a board member until the company IPO.