Episode 5: To and Fro

Immigration stories from 1) an NAE member/IEEE Fellow in tech industry (formerly in academia), 2) a recent Head of CSE Department (formerly in industry), and 3) a Principal Researcher in tech industry (also former faculty).

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Episode Guide

In this Episode: Immigration stories from three Computer Scientists: an NAE member/IEEE Fellow and former Director of Microsoft Research; co-founder of Latinas in Computing and former CSE Dept. Head; and a Principal Researcher at Microsoft and former Professor. Featuring: Rico Malvar (Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft, former Director of Microsoft Research, and also former Professor in Brazil), Dilma da Silva (Professor, Texas A&M, and also former IBM Research and former Professor at Brazil), and Rodrigo Fonseca (Principal Researcher at Microsoft, and also former Professor at Brown University). All three narrators were immigrants from Brazil, about a decade apart, in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s respectively. More details below.

The title phrase of this episode – “To and Fro” – refers to the fact that i) all three narrators spent time in both industry and in academia, and ii) two narrators did their PhDs in US and then returned to Brazil, and subsequently (after significant careers in Brazil) immigrated permanently to the US.

• mm.ss: Segment Info (Index)
• 0.00: Voices in this episode
• 8.31: Dictatorship and Military Rule; Government Support for Education and Research.
• 22.45: Life in Brazilian Universities
  • Faculty on leave from Brazilian universities while pursuing PhDs in the US.
  • How much of BSc class went to grad school.
  • Second generation of students in Brazil.
• 25.20: Entrance exams into Brazilian universities / How to get into a Brazilian University.
• 30.54: Everything was in Brazilian Portuguese!
• 34.09: Challenges upon Immigrating to the US.
• 42.22: High school exchange student in US. Brazil vs. US High school System.
• 48.02: To and Fro: Between Industry and Academia.
• 54.08: To and Fro: From Architecture and Computer Science.
• 59.51: East Coast vs. West Coast (in the US).
• 1.03.02: To and Fro: Redux Academia and Industry.
• 1.05.29: Hispanic Participation in Computer Science.
  • 1.05.29: Can the Brazilian Hispanic experience inform/improve Hispanic participation in CS?
  • 1.07.48: The Accent Bias,
  • 1.11.12: The Dual Immigrant Mindset.

Featured in this Episode

Three prominent and distinguished computer scientists spanning academia and industry, and spanning decades of immigration history in the late 20th century.

1. Henrique “Rico” S. Malvar, Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft.
   • US National Academy of Engineering Member, and IEEE Fellow.
   • Research Areas: Signal Processing, Director of Microsoft Research Labs, Chief Scientist at Microsoft Research, Disability Research (Leader, Enable Group).
   • Known for developing: Lapped transform, Windows Media Audio codec, JPEG XR image codec.
   • Immigrated from Brazil to US (MIT) for PhD in 1982, returned to Brazil in 1986 to resume university professorship at Universidade de Brasilia, re-immigrated to US industry in 1993 (PictureTel), joined Microsoft Research in 1997.
2. Dilma da Silva, Professor, Ford Motor Company Design Professorship II of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University.
   • ACM Distinguished Scientist, Founding (Co-)Leader of Latinas in Computing group, chair of ACM SIGOPS CARES committee, Pat Goldberg Best Paper Award at IBM.
   • Research Areas: Operating Systems, Distributed Systems, Cybersecurity.
   • Immigrated from Brazil to US (GaTech) for PhD in 1990, returned to Brazil in 1997 to resume university professorship at University of São Paulo, re-immigrated to US industry in 2000 (IBM Research), joined Texas A&M CSE as Department Head in 2014.
3. Rodrigo Fonseca, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research.
   • Former Associate Professor (with tenure) at Brown University, USENIX NSDI Test of Time 2017, Stood First in among 42000 candidates for the entrance examination to UFMG Brazil in 1990s.
   • Research Areas: Networking, Systems, Distributed Systems.
   • Immigrated from Brazil to US briefly as high school exchange student in 1990s, returned to Brazil to finish Bachelors at UFMG, re-immigrated to US (Berkeley) for PhD in 2002, became faculty at Brown University in 2009, joined Microsoft Research as Principal Researcher in 2020.

Links

• Brazil Wikipedia Page
• New York Times’ A Brief History of Brazil
• Washington Post’s Brazil: A History of Political and Economic Turmoil
• BBC’s Brazil Profile – Timeline
• Stanford article on Technology Trends in Latin America

Upcoming Episodes

This is the first episode of a 4-episode segment featuring prominent and distinguished Computer Scientists all of whom immigrated from Brazil, and all of whom spent significant time in both industry and academia.

Look for our next three episodes, featuring the full interviews with each of these narrators: Rico Malvar (Episode 6), Dilma da Silva (Episode 7), and Rodrigo Fonseca (Episode 8).

Have you heard the show’s first segment (Episodes 1, 2, 3, 4) featuring Computer Scientists from Yugoslavia, A Country That No Longer Exists? Check them out!

• Credits
  • Music Credits for Podcast
  • The caption picture at top of page is a skyline of Belo Horizonte, a city in Brazil. Pic taken by, and reproduced with permission of, Rodrigo Fonseca (it’s his hometown!).
  • Thanks to Renata Caceres for feedback on an early version of this episode.

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