Marinus Frans (Frans) Kaashoek (born 1965, Leiden) is a Dutch computer scientist, entrepreneur, and Charles Piper Professor[definition needed] at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Kaashoek received his MA in 1988 and his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science in 1992 from the Vrije Universiteit under the supervision of Andy Tanenbaum for the thesis "Group communication in distributed computer systems."
In 1993 Kaashoek was appointed Charles Piper Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He is a member of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory's Parallel and Distributed Operating Systems group.
In the early 2000s Kaashoek assisted in the founding of Mazu Networks Inc. and served as board member until it was acquired by Riverbed Technology in 2009.