Ethan L. Miller

Ethan L. Miller is a Professor Emeritus at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC), affiliated with the Computer Science and Engineering Department within the Baskin School of Engineering. He previously held the Veritas Presidential Chair in Storage Systems and served as Director Emeritus of the NSF I/UCRC Center for Research in Storage Systems. His research focuses on storage systems, security, archival storage, and distributed systems. Miller received his Sc.B. from Brown University and his M.S. and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. He has extensive industry collaboration, notably with Pure Storage, contributing over 190 patents.

Key roles include co-founding the Storage Systems Research Center (SSRC) at UCSC in 2001 and directing the NSF I/UCRC Center from 2012-2019. He retired in July 2023 but continues research collaborations. Awards include IEEE Fellow (2015), ACM Distinguished Scientist (2013), and the William Gaston Prize for Academic Excellence (1987).

Research highlights include work on the Ceph distributed file system, secure archival systems (POTSHARDS), and Twizzler—a data-centric OS for non-volatile memory. Over 100 peer-reviewed publications span storage architecture, security, and performance optimization. Miller also advises on intellectual property cases as an expert witness.

Funding includes NSF grants (e.g., $1.2M for secure long-term storage) and industrial partnerships with companies like EMC, IBM, and Western Digital. His work emphasizes practical solutions for exascale storage challenges and data longevity.