April 6, 2022 / Podcast Episode

Episode 31: From Romania

In this episode: Two distinguished technologists share their experiences of growing up in Communist Romania, behind the Iron Curtain, during the 1970s and 80s; and of life during and after the 1989 Romanian Revolution. Our two guests are Prof. Ion Stoica [Wikipedia] and Prof. Rada Mihalcea [Wikipedia]. They are stalwarts in their respective fields of Computer Systems (ACM Fellow, Mark Weiser Award) and Natural Language Processing (AAAI Fellow, ACM Fellow), and have founded companies as well as done significant outreach work for women and in Romania.
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Episode Guide

In this Episode: Two distinguished technologists share their experiences of growing up in Communist Romania, behind the Iron Curtain, during the 1970s and 80s; and of life during and after the 1989 Romanian Revolution. Our two guests are Ion Stoica [Wikipedia] and Rada Mihalcea [Wikipedia]. Ion Stoica is a stalwart systems researcher, an ACM Fellow, Mark Weiser Award winner, inventor of Apache Spark, Apache Mesos, Ray, Tachyon, Chord, and has founded highly impactful companies Databricks, Anyscale, Conviva. Rada Mihalcea is a stalwart in the Natural Language Processing area, and is an AAAI Fellow, ACM Fellow, and winner of: US PECASE Award, Innovation and Technology Award, Aspen Institute, Romania, 2014. Romanian Academy Award for Science 2010. 

Topics in this Episode 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.)

  • mm.ss: Segment Info (Index)
  • 0.00: Voices in this Episode
  • 2.03: Act 0 – Introduction to Episode, Guests, and Romania Background
  • 7.04: Act 1 – Communism and Government in Romania, 1970s, 80s.
    • 7.04: Ion Stoica: Communism was an Open Lie
      •  “Almost everyone I knew… didn’t believe in communism.”
      • “Romania before WW2 economically was pretty good…”
      • “The communist party was not very representative.”
      • “If you have 100s of 1000s in a party, you’ll have some good people. But when it’s so few, it’s going to be more brutal.”
      • “My mother was kicked out from her University geologist job because her parents were not in the Communist class.”
      • “Communism. You live in(to) this… big lie.”
      • Mentioned in this act: Yalta Conference
    • 12.30: Rada Mihalcea: Growing up Poor in Communist Romania
      • “It’s hard to be poor and not have things when others around you have it… For us nobody had anything.”
      • “We were only allowed to have ten eggs per month, half a bread loaf per day”
      • “Meat, Cheese, and Oranges… it was rare and super special!”
      • “A lot of what Romania produced was exported.”
      • “About 4 hours of power cuts at peak time every evening.”
  • 15.45: Act 2 – Money, or Lack Thereof, 1970s and 80s
    • 15.45: Ion Stoica: Jobs and Salaries in Communist Romania
      • “In socialism everyone was getting more or less the same salary.”
      • “Higher salaries… waiters! Because you get tips. Which you cannot get as an engineer.”
      • “Science evaluation was objective… arts was subjective.”
    • 16.46: Rada Mihalcea: Lack of Money, and Family treasure hunt to find money for food and essentials. And a Collective Bank among Parents’ Colleagues
      • “They (my parents) were getting actual physical money in envelopes.”
      • “There were times  when we didn’t have any money left… all five of us going around the house and trying to find… 5 cents.”
      • “You didn’t really have anything to save.”
    • 19.49: Ion Stoica: Centralized assignment of jobs in Communist Romania
      • “This is the only time in the Romanian education that the GPA really mattered.”
  • 22.17: Act 3 – Communist Dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and The “Folders”, 1960s, 70s, and 80s
    • 22.17: Ion Stoica: Physics vs. Computer Science
      • “Physics was well-funded…  because one of the children of Ceausescu was interested in Physics.”
    • 23.38: Rada Mihalcea: The Government blacklisted many members of my family
      • “Dark blue paper we got with the line ‘You cannot have a passport’ “
      • “My grandfather was sent in prison multiple times, for being an intellectual. In some of the worst prisons.”
      • “Some of my aunts were not allowed to be in school, because of my grandfather.”
      • “My mother and grandmother could not see their family in Italy.”
      •  “There were these folders that the security kept on all families.. Our family had such a folder.”
    • 26.40: Ion Stoica: The Communist Party tried to recruit me
  • 28.48: Act 4 – Exams, Exams, Exams, 1960s-90s
    • 28.48: Ion Stoica
      • “Exam.. that’s practically the only thing that matters.”
      • “Your GPA is not very important.”
    • 31.53: Rada Mihalcea
      • “Education was a way of escaping everything around us.”
      • “The whole school was doing Math Olympiad.”
  • 33.56: Act 5 – Studying in School and College, 1970s, 80s, and 90s
    • 33.56: Rada Mihalcea: Studying at home in candlelight
    • 35.12: Ion Stoica: MIlitary service and colleges
      • “If you don’t get into the top colleges, the army is mandatory…”
    • 37.04: Rada Mihalcea: Entrance Exams into Universities, 1990s
    • 40.42: Rada Mihalcea: Girls and Women in STEM, 1980s and 90s
      • “The team that I was on at the Math Olympiad, there were more girls than boys.”
  • 42.29: Act 6 – Romanian Revolution, 1989
    • 42.29: Ion Stoica: The beginnings of discontent in Romania
    • 43.12: Rada Mihalcea: Revolution was a long time coming
      • “There were 20 Million Romanians, and a handful of people at the leadership and they managed to control… It was because of lack of trust among neighbors… because you didn’t know they were going to tell the police.”
      • “When eventually things happened, it was like a pressure cooker. Everybody was ready… it was the worst life you could imagine.”
    • 45.31: Ion Stoica: Life, and Tech Industry, after the 1989 Revolution
    • 47.26: Rada Mihalcea: Life after the 1989 Revolution
  • 51.34: Act 7 – First Encounters with Technology, 1970s-90s
    • 51.34: Rada Mihalcea: Pen and Paper CS
      • “I actually value a lot pen and paper Computer Science.”
      • “There were students typing in 0-1 language!”
    • 53.55: Ion Stoica: Punched cards disappeared quickly
  • 56.03: Act 8 – Languages, 1960s-90s
    • 56.03: Rada Mihalcea: Languages in School, Street, Home
      • A unique upbringing: “Romanian, Hungarian, Italian, English, French.”
    • 57.45: Ion Stoica: Languages in School, Street, Home
      • “English was pretty universally taught in schools, besides Russian.”
  • 59.03: Act 9 – Immigrant to the US, mid-1990s
    • 59.03: Ion Stoica: Immigrating in 1994 for a PhD at Old Dominion University
      • “During communism no one went to US for studies.”
    • 59.34: Rada Mihalcea: “A mistake”, a chance sequence of events that led her to apply to the US. Such an amazing story!
      • “I wasn’t planning on coming to the United States.”
  • 1,03.05: Act 10 – Links to Homeland Romania today
    • 1,03.05: Ion Stoica: No thoughts of returning after US PhD to Romania. And giving back to Romania.
      • “I was educated in a very open way.”
      • “One thing I started to resent very early on is nationalism, because communism was using nationalism as a tool to unify people.”
    • 1.04.47: Rada Mihalcea: Giving back more to Romania from the US. Working with Romanian government to create the Romanian equivalent of the US PECASE Award.
      • “If I were to go back, I wouldn’t have the power to contribute back.”
      • “PECASE (Presidential Early Career Award) which I won (in the US)… I realized there is no such thing in Romania. So I started one myself, working with the city of Cluj. For 8 years now.”
      • “I think there’s more women in Romania doing research than in other places.”
Featured in this Episode

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

Useful Links
Upcoming Episodes

This is the Lead Episode on immigrants from Romania.

Look for our next two episodes, featuring the full interviews with each of these narrators: Ion Stoica (Episode 32), Rada Mihalcea (Episode 33).

If you liked the Romania episode, you may also be interested in Episode 30, which featured an immigrant from Moldova, a country that neighbors Romania. (See right below for link).

Recently on Season 2
  • Israel Segment: 4 Episodes
    • Interview with Regina Barzilay, Prof MIT, and Cancer Survivor. Double Immigrant from Moldova to Israel, and then Israel to US. [Episode 30]
    • Interview with Moshe Vardi, Prof Rice Univ, and Winner of Gödel Prize and Knuth Prize. [Episode 29]
    • Interview with Tal Rabin, Prof UPenn and Head of Research, Algorand Foundation. [Episode 28]
    • 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!

  • Credits
    • Music Credits for Podcast
    • The caption picture at top of page is of Window Frost. Pic taken by Indranil Gupta. 
 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