March 2, 2022 / Podcast Episode

Episode 27: From Israel

In this episode: 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 and Knuth Prize Winner, 2 ACM Fellows, 2 AAAI Fellows, 2 AAAS Fellows, a MacArthur (Genius) Grant winner, and a cancer survivor.
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Episode Guide

In this Episode: 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 and Knuth Prize Winner, 2 ACM Fellows, 2 AAAI Fellows, 2 AAAS Fellows, and a MacArthur (Genius) Grant winner. 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. Of the 3, 1 was born a US citizen, 1 was born in Moldova (and is a double-immigrant), and 1 was born in Israel. One is a cancer survivor.

Disclaimer: This episode features Jewish researchers who immigrated from Israel to US. You can listen to Arab immigrant experiences to US, in Episodes 9, 10, 11, 12) of the podcast.

  • mm.ss: Segment Info (Index)
  • 0.00: Voices in this Episode
  • 2.07: Act 0 – Introduction to Episode, Guests, and Israel Background
  • 14.11: Act 1 – The Kibbutz
    • 14.53: Regina Barzilay: Immigrating from Moldova to Israel, and a Kibbutz
    • 18.27: Moshe Vardi: First 13 years of life in a Kibbutz
  • 29.38: Act 2 – Parents
    • 30.20: Tal Rabin – Influence of her Mother (we will discuss her father later in the episode)
      •  “I did apply to law school… my mother is a lawyer… She had a career. For a woman her age, that was not the standard thing.”
      • “I didn’t study much…. I’d be late to school, because I loved to sleep.”
    • 34.55: Regina Barzilay – Finding jobs after immigrating from Moldova to Israel in 1990
    • 36.14: Moshe Vardi – Almost becoming a Rabbi
  • 39.00: Act 3 – Persecution
    • 39.28: Moshe Vardi – Parents in Hungarian Holocaust
    • 40.42: Regina Barzilay – Systematic Anti-Semitism in Moldova (USSR System)
  • 48.47: Act 4 – War
    • 50.10: Moshe Vardi – On the frontlines in 1973 Yom Kippur War, and 1982 Israel-Lebanon War
      • “I flew from the US and within 48 hrs… from Palo Alto to Lebanon”
      • “You have to compartmentalize…science from war.”
    • 55.49: Tal Rabin – An Officer in the Israeli Army
      • “They… put us on the border with Lebanon, with lists of names of guys. And we had to mark, going in, not going in…”
  • 1.03.26: Act 5 – Language and Culture
    • 1.03.47: Tal Rabin – On language
      • “I express myself definitely better in Hebrew. My personality is more rooted in Hebrew.”
    • 1.06.24: Moshe Vardi – On language and Israeli interaction styles
      • “Israelis are very direct…like a cactus sweet on the inside and thorny on the outside.”
      • “I even say (expletive) in Hebrew.!”
    • 1.12.10: Regina Barzilay – On language and foreigner accents
      • “People will make jokes about your accent, because you are Russian. But I wasn’t Russian.”
      • “In the middle of the presentation I forgot the next word…. I felt like a failure… I thought it was the end of my academic career.”
  • 1.22.34: Act 6 – The Reluctant Immigrants
    • 1.23.12: Tal Rabin – And her then-husband
      • “In fact I was hoping to come back to Israel as faculty…My then husband had no intention of returning to Israel.”
      • “Whether I’ll go back to not, I don’t know. When we have this interview in 10 years, I’ll tell you.”
    • 1.27.15: Moshe Vardi – And his Relationship
    • 1.28.24: Regina Barzilay – The Housewife Programmer
  • 1.30.55: Act 7 – It’s a Chance I Started This Research
    • 1.31.38: Tal Rabin – A Random Problem from her advisor
    • 1.34.49: Regina Barzilay – Forced to do a thesis
    • 1.37.58: Moshe Vardi – A Random Paper in a Seminar
  • 1.40.26: Act 8 – Computing in 1960s, 70s, and 80s
    • 1.40.56: Moshe Vardi – When Punched Cards became obsolete
      • “1970s was a time of revolution in computing… theory and systems.”
      • “President came to drink champagne… mainframe was updated to 1 MB.”
    • 1.46.19: Tal Rabin – Email in 1980 was Monitored! And doing Computer Science on Pen and Paper.
  • 1.50.09: Act 9 – Adversity, Cancer – How the Diagnosis Changed Regina Barzilay’s Life and Career
    • Regina Barzilay
      • “You don’t know. When you hear you have it, you stop believing the doctor. You forget probability.”
  • 2.05.21: Act 10 – Impostor Syndrome and Comparisons
    • 2.06.16: Regina Barzilay – A Most Unique Philosophy for Impostor Syndrome
      • “I am just a vehicle to bring the group (and research) to this point.”
    • 2.08.22: Tal Rabin – Her Famous Father
      • “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.”
      • “I can tell you – many many times I’ve heard. Oh my God, she’s not like her father.”
  • 2.13.21: Act 11 – Alternate Realities
    • 2.13.40: Tal Rabin
      • “I would have not been me, had i not grown in Israel.”
    • 2.14.50: Moshe Vardi
      • “My mother’s brother lost his wife and daughter in the holocaust.”
      • “There is a phrase in Hebrew – tough times create strong people, strong people successful times, successful times create weak people, weak people create tough times.”
    • 2.19.34: Regina Barzilay
      • “People who grew up in one place connect to the palace in a different way than those of us who are replanted to these places.”
Featured in this Episode

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

  • 2. Moshe Vardi, Professor of Computer Science at Rice University. [Wikipedia] [LinkedIn]
    • Research Areas: Applications of Logic in computer science, including database theory, finite-model theory, knowledge in multi-agent systems, computer-aided verification and reasoning
    • Awards
      • Gödel Prize in 2000, lifetime achievement in theoretical computer science
      • Knuth Prize in 2021 for seminal contributions to computer science foundations
      • ACM Fellow, IEEE  Fellow, Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Fellow of American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), Fellow of American Mathematical Society, Fellow of European Association for Theoretical Computer Science, Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Guggenheim Fellow
      • Member of National Academy of Sciences, Member of National Academy of Engineering,  Member of Academia Europaea, and a Member of the European Academy of Sciences
      • Leadership and service: ACM Presidential Award, Harry H Goode Memorial Award from IEEE, IEEE Norbert Wiener Award for Social and Professional Responsibility
      • Currently Senior Editor of Communications of the ACM, after serving as its Editor-in-Chief for a decade.
Useful Links
Upcoming Episodes

This is the Lead Episode on immigrants from Israel.

Look for our next three episodes, featuring the full interviews with each of these narrators: Tal Rabin (Episode 28), Moshe Vardi (Episode 29), and Regina Barzilay (Episode 30). 

Recently on Season 2
  • 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). [Episodes 24, 25]
In case you missed it | Season 1

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

  • Credits
 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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indygupta Written by:

Professor of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign