His research focuses on the performance, security, and robustness of large-scale distributed web services. Mickens received a B.S. degree in computer science from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2001. In 2008, he received a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Michigan. Before coming to Harvard, he spent six years as a researcher at Microsoft. He is also the creator of Mickens-do, a martial art so deadly that he refuses to teach it to anyone (including himself).