DANIEL M. LEWIN MEMORIAL LECTURE
This lecture honors the memory of Mr. Danny Lewin and was initiated by the generosity of Mr. Marco Greenberg, with additional support from three friends of Danny. Held the day prior to graduation of the Distance Education class, it serves as a capstone event for the Commandant’s National Security Program.
Past speakers:
- AY19 Dr. Gordon Gee – President, West Virginia University (featured in photo)
- AY18 Mr. Andy Ellis – Chief Security Officer, Akamai Technologies
- AY17 Mr. Paul Sagan – Executive in Residence, General Catayst Partners & former Vice Chairman of Akamai’s Board of Directors
- AY16 Mr. Charles Sennott – Co-Founder, GlobalPost, and Founder and Executive Director of The GroundTruth Project
- AY15 Mr. George Economou – Chief Technology Officer, Custom Analytics, Akamai Technologies, Inc.
- AY14 Mr. Todd M. Rosenblum – Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and America’s Security Affairs
- AY13 The Honorable Max Cleland – Secretary of the American Battle Monuments Commission
- AY12 Dr. Paul N. Stockton – Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and America’s Security Affairs
- AY11 Mr. Rick Atkinson – Pulitzer Prize winning author
- AY10 Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, U.S. Army, Retired, former Director, Office of National Drug Control Policy
Daniel M. Lewin was murdered on September 11th, 2001 aboard American Airlines flight 11 which crashed into the World Trade Center towers in NYC. The 9/11 Commission Report mentions Danny by name after concluding there was reason to believe he “…may have made an attempt to stop the hijackers…” A resident of the Boston area, 31 years old, Danny excelled in each of his endeavors, as a distinguished soldier, student, scientist, businessman, and family man. He co-founded Akamai Technologies in 1998, with his professor Dr. F. Tom Leighton and fellow graduate student, Jonathan Seelig. As Chief Technology Officer, Danny was responsible for Akamai’s research and development strategy, creating innovative Internet infrastructure services that would produce an entirely new industry segment, and forever change the way people and companies distribute content, data, and applications. Akamai’s 1,100 employees and global customers miss him dearly. Born in Denver, Danny immigrated to Israel with his family in 1984. He served four years in the Israel Defense Forces, rising to the rank of captain in what is considered the Army’s most elite unit. Following military service, Danny married and began his studies at Technion, Israel’s premier technology university. He worked at IBM’s research laboratory in Haifa, while simultaneously completing two undergraduate degrees, computer science and mathematics summa cum laude, and celebrating the birth of his first son. In 1996, Danny and his wife, Anne, welcomed their second son and moved to Cambridge, Mass. where he received a scholarship to MIT under the tutelage of MIT Professor, and soon to become close friend, Tom Leighton. His Master’s thesis included some of the fundamental algorithms that make up the core of Akamai’s services. He received a Master’s degree from MIT in 1997 and was a Ph.D. candidate in the Algorithms Group at MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science. Danny was a devoted husband, a loving father to sons Eitan and Itamar, loyal son of Drs. Charles and Peggy Lewin, and brother to Jonathan and Michael, of Jerusalem.
