Dr Colin Perkins he/him

My research passion is to make the Internet work better, considering both technologies and governance.

My research group develops new and improved Internet protocols and technologies, with a particular focus on transport protocols for real-time and interactive multimedia, and studies how to improve the way we design, implement, specify, and standardise network protocols.

With its focus on openness and permissionless innovation, the Internet can one of the great enablers. Society in its current form could not exist without the open infrastructure provided by the Internet. My group seeks to improve that infrastructure: to increase its performance, robustness, and openness by improving the underlying technologies. Working with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), I led development of foundational technologies for networked multimedia (e.g., RTP, SDP, WebRTC), incorporating our research results into technical standards to support the foundations for modern networked communications.

A key lesson from this work is that protocols are political. The structure of Internet standards and technologies determines how the network can be used, and influences who has visibility into communications and who can enforce controls on use of the network. The second focus of my group’s work is therefore to improve the way Internet standards are developed, to understand who is involved in standards development and Internet governance, what are their goals and motivations, and how to continue to ensure all voices – not just big tech and governments – have their say in the development of the Internet.

I’ve long supported EDI initiatives in Internet governance, introducing a code of conduct for the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) – a key organisation connecting the research and Internet standards communities – and administering its diversity travel grant programme. I run a diverse and inclusive research group, and am responsible for supporting PhD student progression in the School of Computing Science.

As a supervisor, I aim to supervise projects that seek to understand and improve Internet technologies, standards, and governance, and to encourage students with new perspectives to engage with the Internet standardisation and governance community.