Martin Casado is Chief Technology Officer for Networking at VMware. He is the former co-founder and CTO of Nicira, which VMware acquired in 2012. He received  his PhD from Stanford University in 2007, where his dissertation work led to the creation of the software-defined networking movement. Prior to attending Stanford, he worked as a researcher on network security in the information operations assurance center at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He received the Grace Murray Hopper Award as Outstanding Young Computer Professional of the Year in 2013.