Immigrant Computer Scientists Podcast

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By Indy Gupta
Illnesses. In our drive to succeed as computer scientists, whether in industry or in academia, we sometimes forget we're still human beings. Our bodies can suffer illnesses, sometimes minor and sometimes major. In this episode, two computer scientists who encountered major illnesses in their lives (Tuberculosis, Breast Cancer) talk about how they ...
By Indy Gupta
Three technologists, all of whom have been both professors and worked in industry, talk about their experience with early computing and punched cards while in their college in the 1960s-80s. And how the shift from punched card machines to terminals was sudden! Features immigrants from Israel and Brazil. Featuring: Moshe Vardi (Prof. Rice U....
By Indy Gupta
If you're an immigrant to North America, you might occasionally wonder, "what would my life have been like if I'd instead been born and grown up in North America?" Seven prominent computer scientists from academia and industry (and a few entrepreneurs), who also immigrated to the United States or Canada, were asked this question. Listen in, and l...
By Indy Gupta
Unfortunately, some professionals have to choose between having a career and having a family. Episode 40 covers the stories of two computer scientists, one a professor and the other an entrepreneur, and how they navigated pregnancy at a critical time in their careers. Featuring: Soodeh Farokhi (Founder of C2RO in Canada and another startup ...
By Indy Gupta
This episode highlights five prominent computer scientists from academia and industry talking about how random chance had a major role to play in how they started research itself or chose their specific research area which brought them fame. Tune in to get answers to a few of the questions asked: How did you get into research? How did you select y...
By Indy Gupta
 Impostor Syndrome! When you doubt your skills and capabilities, and feel you might be an impostor or a "fraud" in your professional circles. In this week's episode: Seven prominent Computer Scientists from academia and industry talk about how they handle Impostor Syndrome, Failures, and Rejections. Featuring: Pratima Rao Gluckman (Engine...
By Indy Gupta
You have surely compared yourself to others at some point in your life. Perhaps you do it weekly or even daily, or without thinking! Computer Science is a pretty competitive profession, and some argue comparing oneself to others is a human instinct. The first of our remix episodes is here! It features 6 IITans, currently in Silicon Valley, talking...
By Indy Gupta
The Immigrant Computer Scientists Podcast Season 2 finale is here! In Season 2, we have visited five continents, six countries, and interviewed 15 individuals over 13 episodes.  Season 2 includes incredible growth, upbringing, and immigration stories, sometimes under very adverse circumstances. In this episode, the Season 2 Finale, we have four s...
By Indy Gupta
Our guest: Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Faculty at Northeastern University (Silicon Valley), Startup Founder, Textbook author, and Head of multiple Yahoo! Labs. Immigrant from Chile. Has lived and worked on four continents. IEEE Fellow and ACM Fellow. [Wikipedia] [LinkedIn] [Twitter]. Topics in this episode include:  Amazing and humorous stories e...
By Indy Gupta
This guest came from a background where money wasn't abundant, parents who didn't go to college, and faced many rejections on the road to attending college. Now, she is a professor in the United States and a leading researcher in the area of NLP! In episode 24, we hear the story of Thamar Solorio. She is the 2014 recipient of the Denice Denton Emer...
By Indy Gupta
From a very difficult upbringing to a chance email that she wasn't supposed to receive, which launched Rada Mihalcea's career in research and to the US, and to her eventually becoming a Professor in the US. Oh, and she got a second Ph.D. along the way (Linguistics Ph.D., after a CS Ph.D.)! Our guest: Rada Mihalcea, Professor of Computer Science an...
By Indy Gupta
Guest: Ion Stoica, Professor of Computer and Science at the University of California, Berkeley, Director of RISELab at UC Berkeley. He is also an ACM Fellow, Mark Weiser Award winner, inventor of Apache Spark, Apache Mesos, Ray, Tachyon, Chord, and founder of highly impactful companies Databricks, Anyscale, Conviva. Connect and learn more about Ion...
By Indy Gupta
Today's two guests are famous in their own fields - Systems and NLP respectively: Ion Stoica, Professor of Computer and Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Director of RISELab at UC Berkeley Rada Mihalcea, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan. Director of Michigan AI Lab This episod...
By Indy Gupta
Guest: Regina Barzilay, Professor at MIT in the EECS Department, and a faculty at the MIT Jameel Clinic. Winner of MacArthur Fellowship or "Genius Grant" 2017, AAAI Fellow, and the first recipient of the $1M AAAI Squirrel Award 2020 for Artificial Intelligence for the Benefit of Humanity. Learn more about Regina Barzilay or connect with her. This ...
By Indy Gupta
"We think of ourselves (in Computing) as the Rebels. We are not the Rebels anymore -- We are The Empire. We are running the (Death) Star." "You have to be morally obtuse to work for a tobacco company... today for some computer companies, it requires moral obtuseness to work for them!" - Moshe Vardi, Professor at Rice University, (check out wh...
By Indy Gupta
Guest: Tal Rabin (Prof, UPenn + Head of Research at Algorand Foundation) You may have heard of Multi-Party Computation. You may have seen the song "I will survive" performed by the "Women in Theory" group featuring Women CS Faculty. If not, that's okay! In today's episode, we talk to one of the pioneers of Multi-Party Computation, and the founder...
By Indy Gupta
In this episode, three distinguished technologists share their experiences of growing up in Israel, immigrating reluctantly to the US, fighting in wars, and the differences in culture. Three guests include a Gödel Prize winner and Knuth Prize Winner, two ACM Fellows, two AAAI Fellows, two AAAS Fellows, a MacArthur (Genius) Grant winner, and a canc...
By Indy Gupta
"Women are over-mentored and under-sponsored...Women tend to get a lot of mentors who are not sponsors, and men tend to get a mentors who are sponsors." "Just imagine a world where you're only successful. That would be so boring!" "I'm always being told that I'm aggressive — and I say No, I'm assertive." - Pratima Rao Gluckman, Senior Engine...
By Indy Gupta
Together in one room, seven graduates from IIT Madras (Chennai) India, Computer Science and Engineering Bachelors' degree 1998 cohort. In part two, we discuss:   How did those from small towns/villages succeed at IIT JEE (often called the toughest exam in the world)?   How did immigration change our outlook on life?   Is India's cas...
By Indy Gupta
Presenting - The premiere episode of Immigrant Computer Scientists Podcast Season 2! This kind of episode has never been done before! Together in one room - seven graduates from IIT Madras (Chennai) India, Computer Science and Engineering Bachelors' degree batch of 1998. Of them, three are startup founders, three are industry long-timers (and the h...
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