March 9, 2022 / Podcast Episode

Episode 28: Tal Rabin Interview

In this episode: Interview with Tal Rabin, Prof U. Penn, and Head of Research at Algorand Foundation. 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.
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Episode Guide

In this Episode 28: Interview with Tal Rabin [Wikipedia], 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. 23 years in IBM Research, and more recently a Professor (since 2019). Daughter of Turing Award Winner Michael O. Rabin. Immigrant from Israel in 1994.

  • mm.ss: Segment Info (Index)
  • 0.00: Voices in this Episode
  • 3.04: Biography
  • 6.24: Act 1 – Early Childhood and Schooling, 1960s and 70s
    • 6.24: First childhood memories
    • 6.24: Puzzles given by her father when she was young
    • 7.44: Tal’s father, Michael O. Rabin, the famous Computer Scientist and Turing Award winner
      • “Understanding the magnitude of my father’s work really came with understanding the technical material more.”
      • “I think it’s something very special for a child to understand what their parent does at such a deep level.”
    • 10.36: In school, good at Math and Sciences. 
      • “I did apply to law school… my mother is a lawyer.”
    • 10.36:  Her Mother as her role model. 
      • “She had a career. For a woman her age, that was not the standard thing.”
    • 11.57: A school day, and Tal’s babysitter, and the impact that Tal’s mother had on the babysitter’s life and career.
      • “I didn’t study much.”
      • “I’d be late to school, because I loved to sleep.”
    • 14.12: What was special about the Israeli school system, especially Math and Science?
    • 15.11: Having been born in the US, did she feel out of place growing up in Israel?
      • “I’m completely an Israeli. Anybody who knows me knows…”
    • 15.36: Dad and Mom were also immigrants to Israel.
    • 16.20: What languages did she learn? 
      • “Only Hebrew… learnt English on (my parents’) Sabbaticals.”
    • 17.35: Do you think ideas in Hebrew or English?
      • “I express myself definitely better in Hebrew. My personality is more rooted in Hebrew.”
    • 19.07:  The first computer their family bought… which was used to drape clothes over.
    • 19.54: When the University monitored her email in 1983.
      • “I have had email since 1983.”
    • 21.20: First programming language
  • 21.53: Act 2 – Going to University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI), 1980s
    • 21.53: “Going to university was expected.”
      •  “But the job market was not doing well in the year I graduated. So I thought I’d stay and do a Masters.”
    • 23.36: What was needed for university application?
    • 24.17: Deciding Computer Science over Law. 
  • 25.18: Act 3 – An officer in the Israeli Army, and Serving in the Lebanon War and Intifada, early to mid 1980s
    • 25.18: Serving in the Military after high school
      • “They… put us on the border with Lebanon, with lists of names of guys. And we had to mark, going in, not going in…”
    • 27.49: How things deteriorated in the Occupied Territories quickly, within 1 year. 
    • 29.32: Did the Lebanon War and Intifada affect her parents’ jobs?
      • “It affected every Israeli… there were bombings…. It’s a small country.”
      • “Israelis are very involved in their political lives.”
    • 30.38: How the War interrupted life.
    • 31.17: How do Israelis deal with (years of) constant conflict?
  • 32.35: Act 4 – Getting into Research, 1980s and 1990s
    • 32.35: “I was happy doing my schoolwork.”
    • 33.39: Starting with research – a random problem given by her advisor. Which became her research topic for her career.
      • “This was 1986… there wasn’t much… there was one paper.”
    • 35.40: What was (and is) your creative process? How do you think about a problem?
      • “I need to be holding a pen and paper.”
    • 36.54: What excited her about research? Her memory of the moment she solved her first problem. 
  • 38.17: Act 5 – Women and Diversity: Her observations of women around her in STEM/Tech
    • 38.17: Women in her Bachelors program – close to 50%, but then went down.
      • “When I started at HUJI, the percentage of women was very high… then it went down, and down.”
      • “Masters and PhD: We were a group of women together… we drew a lot of support from each other.”
    • 39.05: The network of women that formed in her Masters and PhD years.
    • 39.45: Discrimination against, and stereotyping of, women in the tech workplace: Story of her daughter. And how do we prevent this in the community?
    • 43.29: How do we address the discrimination against women in the tech workplace?
    • 45.27: What happened to her classmates from Bachelors and Masters programs?
  • 46.44: Act 6 – Immigrating to the US. Her postdoc at MIT, 1994
    • 46.44: Plans of returning to Israel to become a faculty… what changed her plans?
      • “In fact I was hoping to come back to Israel as faculty.”
      • “My then husband had no intention of returning to Israel.”
    • 48.46: Managing a family with a child, while doing postdoc research 
    • 49.59: Other challenges after immigrating: family and friends
    • 51.57: Forming friends who are not parents of their kids
    • 53.17: Hobbies, and taking her mind off of everything: Learning Israeli folk dance
      • “I love to do things that are not work.”
      • “I’m into junk TV.”
  • 54.42: Act 7 – A researcher at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, 1996-2019
    • 54.42: Did the desire to return to Israel go away?
      • “When I want to go back to Israel, I’ll go back to Israel.”
      • After being in the US for 29 years, Tal says, “Whether I’ll go back to not, I don’t know. When we have this interview in 10 years, I’ll tell you.”
    • 56.17: Changing face of research labs from 1996 to 2019.
    • 58.21: Can we bring back the old research labs?
      • “Shouldn’t be blue sky.”
      • “Maybe the companies have gone a bit too far, and we need to find a balance.”
  • 59.37: Act 8 – Academia and Algorand, 2019-Present
    • 59.38: Why leave IBM for academia in 2018?
      • “We had just gotten a huge grant for 5 years… I was thinking 56+5 = 61… I’m never gonna leave IBM.”
    • 1.01.35: What does the Algorand foundation do?
  • 1.03.20: Act 9 – Outreach efforts: Why she started the “Women in Theory” Group/Conference/Workshop (and Network)
  • 1.06.53: Act 10 – Retrospectives and Perspectives
    • 1.07.53: Failures and Rejections
    • 1.09.07: Dealing with Impostor Syndrome
    • 1.10.02: Women feeling the need to overperform in an industry of mostly men
      • “Women’s work is not considered to be as good as men’s work, even if it’s the same work.”
    • 1.11.16: When some compare her to her father 
      • “I can tell you – many many times I’ve heard — Oh my God, she’s not like her father.”
    • 1.13.35: When did she become aware of gender disparities?
      • (Apologies for the New York City noises (police sirens) in the background.)
    • 1.14.25: If you grew up in the US, would have life and career been different? (All else being equal) 
      • “I would have not been me, had i not grown in Israel.”
  • 1.15.34: Thank you and Ending
Featured in this Episode
Useful Links
Upcoming Episodes

This is the second episode of a 4-episode segment on immigrants from Israel.

Look for our next two episodes, featuring the full interviews with each of these narrators: Moshe Vardi (Episode 29), and Regina Barzilay (Episode 30). 

Recently on Season 2
  • Israel Segment
    • From Israel: Episode featuring 3 distinguished Computer Scientists (Tal Rabin, Moshe Vardi, Regina Barzilay). [Episode 27]
  • India Segment: 3 Episodes
    • Interview with Pratima Rao Gluckman, author of book “Nevertheless, She Persisted: True Stories of Women Leaders in Tech”, and immigrant from India, and leader in Silicon Valley. [Episode 26]
    • IIT Madras, Computer Science Batch of 1998: Interview with 7 graduates from that batch (comprising about 25% of the batch). 4 PhDs + 3 Masters. 3 entrepreneurs, 3 industry long-timers, and 1 Professor (host). [Episode 24, Episode 25]
In case you missed it | Season 1

Season 1 featured 22 episodes where we visited 5 continents, and 7 countries. Check them out!

 The Immigrant Computer Scientists Podcast is available for free on your favorite devices & apps: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and many more!
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Professor of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign