Episode 11: Fadel Adib

Interview with: Fadel Adib. 
Professor of EECS at MIT. Entrepreneur.  
Immigrant from Lebanon.

Episode Guide

In this Episode with Fadel Adib: Growing up in Lebanon amid multiple wars, a civil war, and bombings. Doing humanitarian work instead of studying. The Itinerant/Immigrant DNA/gene in Lebanon. Having a choice of major, and choosing Computer Engineering. President Obama about to see Fadel’s project, and then everything starts going wrong! The entrepreneurial mindset to research. Advice! One weird trick to write the perfect cold email that get a response! How to ace an interview with a prospective advisor! Impostor Syndrome. Advice for starting assistant professors! And much more!

• mm.ss: Segment Info (Index)
• 0.00: Voices in this episode
• 1.43: Biography
• Act 1: 3.43: Early childhood memories, and early science and math interest. 1989-2007
  • 3.43: Was born right after Lebanon Civil War ended.
    • “May you have beautiful days!”
  • 6.02: Did the post-Civil War hope last? Doing humanitarian work in Lebanon.
    • “People will party and live even when we’re being bombed”
  • 7.45: Instead of studying for SATs, doing humanitarian work in Lebanon during the 2006 Hezbollah vs. Israel war (which affected Lebanon). And preparing for SATs in 1 week!
  • 11.32: Language of school education (English, French, Arabic). Spoken vs. Written Arabic.
  • 12.51 : Is Arabic different in different parts of the world?
  • 12.58: The Immigrant Gene. Great grandmother migrated from Tunisia to Lebanon in the Ottoman Empire.
  • 14.27: First computer and first programming language
• Act 2: 16.33: Bachelors in American University of Beirut (AUB), 2007-2011
  • 16.33: Getting into University: Why choose Computer Engineering as a major? (Hint: he didn’t!)
  • 17.34: Admissions process to American University of Beirut. Deciding to move to US, but not yet.
  • 19.52: US SAT exams are the same ones as the Lebanon SAT exams.
  • 20.31: Why choose Computer Science/Engineering? 
    • “Computers are not smart, the people who make them are the smart ones.”
  • 21.56: AUB Computer Science Curriculum (vs. US Computer Science Curriculum).
    • Fewer introductory courses and more advanced courses. “We do freshman in high school, and then 4 years of college including summers.” “AUB is abiding by the US system of 4 years and the Lebanon system of 6 years”
  • 25.30: Starting with research at AUB. 
    • “I liked creating new things, even when I was young.” “I see signals in almost anything… many Computer Science topics… the world is signals.”
• Act 3: 27.32: Looking to get away from Lebanon, 2011
  • 27.32: Cold emailing a faculty in MIT for an internship. One weird trick to write the perfect cold email! And how to ace an interview that is not going well.
    • “I spent a lot of time… 2 weeks. Targeted cold emails… still work for me now!”
  • 31.08: How long should cold emails be?
    • “I need to know the one (most)  interesting thing.”
  • 33.27: Is grading in AUB tough/difficult?
    • “I would optimize for my common mistakes.”
  • 34.34: Political instability and his time in AUB, and the current situation living in Lebanon. 
    • “It was a very scary time… every weekend there would be a bombing… you’re afraid for your life!” “For 3 weeks we had no college.” “Politics invades your life.” “When I came to the US… I felt.. OMG, politics is not invading my life, and I’m able to focus on doing work… I have 10 times more to work!”
    • “In the US, being able to work continuously is such a privilege that I never had before.”
  • 38.29: Why move to the US?
    • “If you want to go to a place where you want to grow, the US is the place.”
  • 39.25: What happened to his batchmates in AUB? Did they stay?
    • “Most people in Lebanon are immigrant… 50% of the people in my age group.”
• Act 4: 41.50: Life in the US as PhD student at MIT, 2011-2016
  • 41.50: Adapting to life: the hardest things. “You miss your family.”
  • 43.47: Mom did grad school in US and moved back to Lebanon. Did he considering returning to Lebanon?
    • “Beirut was called the Paris of the Middle East, Lebanon the Switzerland.”
• Act 5: 44.36: Life as a faculty, 2016-Present
  • 44.36: Advice for those looking to become a faculty member! Transitioning from student at MIT to professor at MIT. 
  • 47.55: How to ace the interview with your prospective advisor!
    • “The student advisor relationship starts with the interview.”
    •  “If you could be one character from a movie in real life, what would you like to be?”
• Act 6: 53.00: Retrospectives, Perspectives
  • 53.00: Mentors and Role models: Parents, school teachers, advisor, and current colleagues! 
    • “The more senior you get the more mentors you get!”
  • 55.52: Dealing with Failures, Rejections, Impostor Syndrome
    • “People don’t know that they’re good when they’re good.”
    • “The way to deal with impostor syndrome… Think about your previous stage, not the current stage, and ask yourself — were you good enough?”
  • 58.54: Dealing with rejections of your papers and proposal and ideas
  • 1.01.26: The Entrepreneurial Spirit. Should students think of entrepreneuralizing their research work? 
  • 1.04.00: Demo-ing his work to President Obama, and the Near-disaster that happened right before it. 
  • 1.09.00: If he had instead grown up in US or Canada, would his interests or career have been different?
  • 1.10.18: Did he consider industry/entrepreneurship as a career (instead of academia)?
  • 1.11.17: Parents being in another land

About the Narrator in this Episode

• Fadel Adib (LinkedIn),
  • Associate Professor of EECS at MIT, and Entrepreneur.
  • Invents new technologies to interconnect, sense, and perceive the physical world. His commercialized technologies are used to monitor thousands of patients with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and COVID19.
  • Select Awards
    • MIT Technology Review’s Innovators TR35 under 35 Award, 2014
    • Forbes 30 under 30 list, 2015.
• Fadel Adib’s Immigration Journey
  • 1989: Born in Lebanon
  • 2011: Bachelors Degree, American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon
  • 2011: Immigrated from Lebanon to USA, for PhD
  • 2013: Masters in EECS from MIT, in Cambridge, USA
  • 2016: PhD in EECS from MIT, in Cambridge, USA
  • 2016: Became Assistant Professor of EECS at MIT, in Cambridge, USA
  • 2016-2021: Tenured Associate Professor of EECS at MIT, in Cambridge, USA

Links

• Britannica page on Middle East
• Iran Wikipedia page
• Lebanon Wikipedia Page
• MENA (Middle East North Africa) Wikipedia Page
• World Atlas Page on Middle East
• Iran’s 2009 Presidential Elections
• Lebanese Civil War of 1975-1990
• 2006 Lebanon War,

Upcoming Episodes

This is the third episode of a 4-episode segment featuring prominent and distinguished Entrepreneurial+Academic Computer Scientists all of whom immigrated from Middle East.

We also recommend you listen to the Lead Episode for Middle East Entrepreneurs (Episode 9), and the interview with Soodeh Farokhi (Episode 10). Stay tuned for a bonus episode in Episode 12!

• 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!
• Have you heard the show’s segment (Episodes 5, 6, 7, 8) featuring Computer Scientists from Brazil, all of whom spent careers in both academia and industry, going To and Fro between Brazil and US, and to and fro between academia and industry.

• Credits
  • Music Credits for Podcast
  • The caption picture at top of page is of the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park. Pic taken by Indy Gupta.

The Immigrant Computer Scientists Podcast is available for free on your favorite devices & apps: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and many more!