Meraki Advisors

Robert Morris is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at MIT, where he is a member of the Parallel and Distributed Operating Systems group. He has published extensively on wireless networks, distributed operating systems, and peer-to-peer applications. In 1988 his discovery of buffer overflow first brought the Internet to the attention of the general public. He has an AB and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Harvard. Dr. Morris also started Viaweb, the first ASP, which became the Yahoo! Store.

Hari Balakrishnan is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at MIT, where he leads the Networks and Mobile Systems group at CSAIL. His research in the area of networked computer systems spans overlay and peer-to-peer networks, Internet architecture, wireless and sensor networks, network security, and distributed data management.

Hari received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC Berkeley in 1998 and a B.Tech. from the IIT Madras in 1993. His honors include a Sloan Fellowship (2002), an NSF CAREER Award (2000), the ACM doctoral dissertation award for his work on reliable data transport over wireless networks (1998), and several award-winning papers including the IEEE Communication Society's William R. Bennett Prize (2004). He has also received awards for excellence in research and teaching at MIT (Harold Edgerton, Junior Bose, and Spira awards).

Edward Kohler is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Harvard University, where he researches systems, networks, programming languages, and software engineering. Prior to Harvard, Dr. Kohler was Chief Scientist at Mazu Networks (acquired by Riverbed) and a faculty member in the computer science department at UCLA. Dr. Kohler holds S.B., S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from MIT.

Alan Saldich has held a variety of leadership roles in marketing, finance, and operations at nine startup companies over the last 22 years. From 2002 to 2009, he was vice president of product marketing at Riverbed Technology, which develops high performance IT networking and cloud infrastructure solutions. Alan ran product marketing at Riverbed from inception in 2002, when he was the first employee hired by the two founders, until late 2009. When he left, Riverbed was a global networking leader generating approximately $400 million in annual revenues. Today he advises several companies and non-profit organizations and is head of operations and serves on the board of We Care Solar, a non-profit startup developing portable solar systems for medical clinics in the developing world. Alan holds a B.Sc. in mechanical engineering from University of California, Berkeley, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.