Immigrant Computer Scientists

Episode 43. Two Computer Scientists who encountered major illnesses in their lives (Tuberculosis, Breast Cancer) talk about how they navigated it, and used their experience to improve their education and research directions. Features immigrants from Chile and Moldova+Israel. Featuring: Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Regina Barzilay. Remix Episode from Seasons 1 & 2.

Episode 42. Punched Cards! Three technologists (all of whom have been both Profs and worked in industry) talk about their experience with early computing and punched cards while in their college in the 1960s-80s. Features immigrants from Israel and Brazil. Featuring: Moshe Vardi, Rico Malvar, Tal Rabin. Remix Episode from Seasons 1 & 2. 

Episode 41. Alternate Realities.  If you're an immigrant to the US/Canada, have you ever wondered, "What would my life have been like if I'd instead been born and grown up in US/Canada?" I asked seven accomplished and prominent immigrant Computer Scientists (from academia, industry, entrepreneurs) this question. Featuring: Regina Barzilay, Tal Rabin, Ion Stoica, Rada Mihalcea, Thamar Solorio, Moshe Vardi, Ricardo Baeza-Yates. Remix Episode from Season 2.

Episode 40. Pregnancy can affect the career of women researchers and entrepreneurs. In this episode we talk to a Professor and a successful Startup Founder about how they navigated this stage of their lives. This episode contains concrete and amazing advice! Featuring: Thamar Solorio (Prof U. Houston) and Soodeh Farokhi (Founder C2RO and VP Nakisa).

Episode 39. Random Ways to Start Research. Five distinguished Computer Scientists talk about the role that random chance played in getting them started with research itself or their specific research area. Featuring: Rada Mihalcea, Tal Rabin, Regina Barzilay, Moshe Vardi, Thamar Solorio. Remix Episode from Season 2.

Episode 38. Impostor Syndrome. And Failures and Rejections: How Seven accomplished and prominent Computer Scientists (from academia, industry, entrepreneurs) handle them in their career and life. Featuring: Pratima Rao Gluckman, Regina Barzilay, Tal Rabin, Ion Stoica, Rada Mihalcea, Thamar Solorio, Ricardo Baeza-Yates. Remix Episode from Season 2.

Episode 37. Conversation with 6 IITans in Silicon Valley (IIT Madras CS Batch of 1998) about the human tendency to compare oneself to others.

Episode 36: Season 2 Finale Episode! Featuring 4 Acts: Native American Code Talkers, Stuck in Visa Limbo inside the US, and Two Personal Thoughts from the host. 

Episode 35: Interview with Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Professor at Northeastern University (Silicon Valley). ACM Fellow and IEEE Fellow. Best-selling textbook author. Startup founder, Former Lead of Multiple Yahoo! Labs, and Faculty in Chile. Has lived and worked on 4 continents (S and N America, Europe, Asia). Grew up in Chile.

Episode 34: Interview with Thamar Solorio, Professor at University of Houston. Renowned researcher in Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. Immigrant from Mexico in 2005. 

Episode 33: Interview with Rada Mihalcea, Prof U. Michigan. Stalwart researcher in Natural Language Processing. Double PhD (CS, Linguistics). AAAI Fellow. Creator of PECASE award for junior faculty in Romania. Immigrant from Romania to US in 1997.

Episode 32: Interview with Ion Stoica, Professor at  University of California, Berkeley. Creator, leader, and founder of Apache Spark, Ray, Apache Mesos. Founder of Databricks, Anyscale, and Conviva. ACM Fellow, SIGOPS Mark Weiser Award.  Immigrant from Romania in 1994.

Episode 31: Two distinguished technologists share their experiences of growing up in Communist Romania in the 1960s-1990s, of the 1989 Romanian Revolution, and of immigrating reluctantly to the US. Featuring: Ion Stoica (Prof at UC Berkeley and founder of Databricks, Anyscale, and Conviva, Inventor of Apache Spark, Mesos, and Ray), and Rada Mihalcea (Prof at U. Michigan, AAAI Fellow, Creator of Romanian PECASE Program). Topics include: Growing up in Communist Romania under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu in the 1970s and 80s; Schooling and education system in Romania during 1970s, 80s, and 90s; Romania during and after the 1989 Romanian Revolution; Our guests' Immigration to the US (in 1994 and 1997 respectively); and Perspectives. This is the Lead Episode for the Immigrant Computer Scientists Podcast's segment on Romania (first of 3 episodes on Romania.)

Episode 30: Interview with Regina Barzilay, Professor at MIT in the EECS Department, and a faculty at the MIT Jameel Clinic. Double immigrant from Moldova (USSR) to Israel (in 1990), and then Israel to US (1997). Breast cancer survivor. Winner of MacArthur Fellowship or “Genius Grant” 2017, AAAI Fellow, and first recipient of $1M AAAI Squirrel Award 2020 for Artificial Intelligence for the Benefit of Humanity. 

Episode 29: Interview with Moshe Vardi. Professor of Computer Science at Rice University. Winner of Gödel Prize (2000), and Knuth Prize (2021). ACM Fellow, IEEE Fellow, AAAS Fellow, AAAI Fellow, AMS Fellow, EATCS Fellow, Guggenheim Fellow. Member of NAE, NAS, and EAS. Topics include: Moshe's childhood and college years in Israel, Fighting in two of Israel's wars (1970s, 1980s), Computing Revolution in the 1960s and 70s, Comparing Industry vs. Academia, and A clarion call to the Computing Community to change the way we view ourselves. And much more! Immigrant from Israel in 1981. 

Episode 28: Interview with Tal Rabin, Prof CIS at Univ. Pennsylvania, and Head of Research at Algorand Foundation (blockchain). Ranked by Business Insider (2014) as #4 on List of "22 Most Powerful  Women Engineers in World". Ranked by Forbes (2018)  among "The World's Top 50 Women In Tech". ACM Fellow, IACR Fellow. Founder of "Women in Theory" Conference. Immigrant from Israel in 1994.

Episode 27: Three distinguished technologists share their experiences of growing up in Israel, of immigrating reluctantly to the US, of fighting in wars, and differences in culture. Three guests who include a Gödel Prize winner, 2 ACM Fellows, 2 AAAI Fellows, 2 AAAS Fellows,  a MacArthur (Genius) Grant winner, and a cancer survivor. Featuring: Tal Rabin (Prof, UPenn and Algorand Foundation), Moshe Vardi (Prof, Rice U.), Regina Barzilay (Prof, MIT). Topics include: Kibbutz upbringing, ancestry, persecution, war, language, culture, research beginnings that are chance, computing in 1960s/70s/80s, surviving cancer, impostor syndrome, and alternate life paths. 

Episode 26: Technologist and Author of book “Nevertheless, She Persisted: True Stories of Women Leaders in Tech”. Discussion of her immigration journey from India/Instrumentation Engineering/cricket to US/Computer Science/STEM. And a discussion of how her book came about. And of key themes in the book.

Episode 25. Conclusion of a conversation with 6 Computer Science Bachelors' graduates from IIT Madras (Chennai), India, batch of 1998. A free-ranging conversation on the IITs, on India, on technology, and on life as Indian immigrants in the US. All guests are immigrants currently in the US tech sector, including startup founders and large tech companies. 

Episode 24. Season 2 Premiere. A conversation with 6 Computer Science Bachelors' graduates from IIT Madras (Chennai), India, batch of 1998. All guests are immigrants currently in the US tech sector, including startup founders and large tech companies.

Episode 23: Hear voices from upcoming Season 2! New countries, new guests, new stories! Fresh episodes releasing every week!

Episode 22: How do you discover that you are a good entrepreneur, or that you like it? Does a PhD help one be a good entrepreneur? Featuring: Soodeh Farokhi (VP Nakisa, and founder of successful startups in Iran and Canada), and Fadel Adib (Professor, MIT). 

Episode 21: Two guests talk about inequity and diversity in IOI (International Olympiad in Informatics). Danqi Chen, a rare woman gold medalist at IOI (and now a Prof). And Prof. Jelani Nelson's analysis of IOI inequity  data for the US. 

Episode 20: What was CS like in 1970s and 80s, around the world? The answers might surprise you! Stories of studying and working CS in: Europe (Yugoslavia), South America (Brazil), Africa (Egypt) in the 1970s and early 1980s. Featuring prominent immigrant Computer Scientists: Dejan Milojicic, Rico Malvar, Amr El Abbadi. 

Episode 19: Four Prominent Computer Scientists who have spent time in both academia and industry, over multiple decades, contrast their experiences in these two sectors. Featuring: Rico Malvar, Dilma Da Silva, Rodrigo Fonseca, Fadel Adib.

Episode 18: Two prominent US Computer Scientists, both Professors in the US, grew up in  Lebanon and Egypt in the 1960, 70s, 90s, and 2000s. They describe the effect of the wars in their countries on their and their family's lives. A remix episode from Season 1.

Episode 17: Three prominent US Computer Scientists who immigrated from Yugoslavia in the 1980s and 90s describe the effect of the Balkan Wars (1990s) on their and their family's lives. A remix episode from Season 1.

Episode 16:  Impostor Syndrome. And Failures and Rejections: How Ten accomplished and prominent Computer Scientists (from academia, industry, entrepreneurs) handle them in their career and life.

Episode 15: Three anonymous narrators, all of them immigrants who went through or are going through difficulty experiences. Two are real people. One is a composite of several real people.

Episode 14: Interview with Danqi Chen, Assistant Professor of CS at Princeton. Stanford PhD. IOI Gold Medal Winner (only woman to win Gold in 2008!). Student in famous Yao Class at Tsinghua University.

Episode 13: Interview with Jelani Nelson, Professor of EECS at UC Berkeley. Grew up in US Virgin Islands, where an overwhelming majority of population is Black and the educational ethos is very different from the mainland US 50 states. He also created two successful international CS programs for high schoolers: AddisCoder and USVICoder,  in Ethiopia and US Virgin Islands. MIT PhD 2011.  

Episode 12: Interview with Amr El Abbadi, Professor of CS at UCSB. Immigrant, in the 1980s, from Egypt and Lebanon. Son of famous historians and academics. 

Episode 11: Interview with Fadel Adib, MIT Professor. MIT PhD. Entrepreneur. Humanitarian. Immigrant from Lebanon.

Episode 10: Interview with Soodeh Farokhi, Entrepreneur and founder of successful companies in Iran and Canada (C2RO), with a PhD in between from Austria. Topics include women entrepreneurs in STEM,  immigrants as entrepreneurs, whether a PhD maketh a better entrepreneur, deciding not to immigrate to US.

Episode 9: Two young and successful entrepreneurs originally from Iran and Lebanon, now residing in Canada and US. One - she has founded successful startups in both Iran and Canada, with a PhD from Austria in between. She is from Iran. Two - he is a Professor of Computer Science at MIT. He is from Lebanon. 

Episode 8. Interview with Rodrigo Fonseca, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research. Formerly: Tenured Associate Professor of Computer Science, Brown University. Nationwide topper among 42K students of Brazil entrance exam to UFMG. Twice immigrant from Brazil to US, in 1990s (high school exchange student) and 2000s (PhD and work).

Episode 7. Interview with Dilma da Silva, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University. Co-founder of "Latinas in Computing", ACM SIGOPS CARES Committee Chair. Formerly: head of the CSE Dept. at Texas A&M, Researcher at IBM Research.  Also former Professor in Brazil. Twice immigrant from Brazil to US, in 1990s (PhD) and 2000s (work).

Episode 6. Interview with Rico Malvar, Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft. US National Academy of Engineering Member, and IEEE Fellow. Formerly: Managing Director of Microsoft Research, Chief Scientist for Microsoft Research. Also former Professor in Brazil. Twice immigrant from Brazil to US, in 1980s (PhD) and 1990s (work).

Episode 5. To and fro between Brazil and US. To and fro between industry and academia. Immigration stories from three computer scientists from immigrated from Brazil in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. And went to and fro between being academic faculty and working in industry. Featuring: Rico Malvar (NAE Member, IEEE Fellow, former Microsoft Research Director), Dilma da Silva (Professor at Texas A&M, Co-Founder of Latinas in Computing, former CSE Department Head), Rodrigo Fonseca (Microsoft Research, former Professor). 

Episode 4. Interview with Dejan Milojicic, Distinguished Technologist at Hewlett Packard Labs. IEEE Fellow and ACM Distinguished Scientist. Leader in the Cloud Computing and Middleware Systems community. Immigrant from Yugoslavia to Germany for PhD and then to  US for work in the mid 1990s.

Episode 3. Interview with Jelena Mirkovic, Research Associate Professor at University of Southern California and Information Sciences Institute (ISI). Leader in the security and networking field, and in building the well-known DeterLab testbed. Immigrant from Yugoslavia to the US for her PhD in 1998, went to high school and university in Belgrade during the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s.

Episode 2. Interview with Nenad Medvidovic, Professor of Computer Science at University of Southern California. IEEE Fellow, ACM Distinguished Scientist. Leader in  Software Engineering research community. Twice-Immigrant from Yugoslavia to  US in high school and for Bachelors degree in 1980s.

Episode 1. Immigration stories from two Professors of Computer Science, and a Distinguished Technologist in Tech Industry. Featuring: Nenad Medvidovic (IEEE Fellow, Professor at USC), Jelena Mirkovic (Research Professor at USC), and Dejan Milojicic (IEEE Fellow, Distinguished Technologist at HP Labs). All three were immigrants from Yugoslavia.For more information and episode guides visit: http://csimmigrant.org/ 

Trailer for Immigrant Computer Scientists Podcast. Prominent and distinguished Computer Scientists from academia and industry narrate their personal experiences of immigrating from where they grew up, to a completely different land (often the US), for study, work, or other reasons. Intended for a General Audience.