Brooks Davis
Principal Research Scientist at FreeBSD
Cambridge, England, United Kingdom
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolBrooks Davis is a Principal Research Scientist with 25 years of systems and security research experience, currently based in Cambridge and leading work at Capabilities Limited while affiliated with the University of Cambridge. He has deep roots in the FreeBSD community as a long-standing committer and former core team member, and has driven DARPA-funded research as PI on compartmentalization and CHERI-enabled OS work while at SRI. Brooks combines low-level systems engineering with careful code stewardship—evidenced by refactorings to tcpdump and portability fixes in OpenZFS that improved modularity and pointer safety across platforms. He is comfortable moving between research and production code, from sandboxing packet dissectors to hardening file-system internals, and brings a pragmatic focus on maintainability and portability. An early Intel intern who worked on ASCI Red, he blends decades of operational experience with academic rigor and a knack for disentangling legacy complexity.
24 years of coding experience
27 years of employment as a software developer
BS, Computer Science, BS, Computer Science at Harvey Mudd College
Github Skills (15)
c1710
system10
systemd10
filesystem10
openzfs10
c1110
packet-capture10
sys10
libpcap10
pointer10
code-optimization9
debugging9
ip-filter8
freebsd7
risc-v6
Programming languages (16)
Github contributions (5)
openzfs/zfs
Oct 2022 - Nov 2022
OpenZFS on Linux and FreeBSD
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:6 reviews, 19 commits, 11 PRs in 1 month
Contributions summary:Brooks primarily focused on improving the ZFS codebase, specifically addressing issues related to pointer handling and data integrity. They modified code to use `uintptr_t` for pointer storage, enhancing portability and preventing potential issues on systems with different pointer sizes. Furthermore, the user addressed warnings and improved code clarity by removing unused variables and simplifying legacy code. These changes demonstrate a strong focus on code quality and maintainability within the ZFS file system project.
openzfstarballlinuxfreebsdsystem-software
the-tcpdump-group/tcpdump
Apr 2015 - May 2015
the TCPdump network dissector
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:7 PRs, 6 comments in 27 days
Contributions summary:Brooks's commits focus on refactoring and improving the internal structure of the `tcpdump` utility. They disentangled packet dissection functionalities from internal libraries, narrowing the public interface and enabling sandboxing of core components. The code modifications primarily involve reorganizing and moving functions, specifically related to packet printing and utility functions, into separate files. This refactoring effort aims to improve code modularity and maintainability.
bpfdissectorbsd-packet-filternetworkingwireshark
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