Episode 39: Random Ways to Start Research

In this episode: Five distinguished Computer Scientists talk about the role that random chance played in getting them started with research itself or their specific research area. 

Episode Guide

In this Episode: Quick tidbits of advice! Five accomplished and prominent Computer Scientists, from across academia, industry, and entrepreneurial world, talk about the role that random chance played in getting them started with research itself or their specific research area. This is a remix episode, featuring snippets of conversations from Season 2 of the podcast. Featuring: Rada Mihalcea, Tal Rabin, Regina Barzilay, Moshe Vardi, Thamar Solorio.

• mm.ss: Segment Info (Index)
• 1.20: Introduction to Episode
• 1.54: Act 1 – Rada Mihalcea, Professor U. Michigan (Immigrant from Romania)
  • The “Administrative Mistake” in her Romania University, and one email she was not supposed to receive, changed Rada’s life and propelled her to apply to US graduate school
  • “I wasn’t planning on coming to the United States!”
• 5.19: Act 2 – Tal Rabin, Head of Research at Algorand Foundation, and Professor at U. Penn (Immigrant from Israel)
  • A Random Problem from her advisor
• 8.50: Act 3 – Regina Barzilay, Professor at MIT (Immigrant from Israel)
  • “Forced” to do a thesis
• 12.20: Act 4 – Moshe Vardi, Professor at Rice Univ. (Immigrant from Israel)
  • A Random Paper in a Seminar
• 14.41: Act 5 – Thamar Solorio, Professor U. Houston (Immigrant from Mexico)
  • Ready to get a job after BS, and then accidentally attending a talk about a fellowship for a US graduate school. 

Episodes Like This One 

This is a remix episode from Season 2. If you’re interested in hearing the full interviews with these 5 Computer Scientists, they are available in Episodes 24-36 of our Season 2 (see links below).

You may also like the other remix episodes of Season 2 (see section “Recently on Season 2” below).

Stay tuned for more remix episodes coming up during summer 2022!

Featured in this Episode

• Rada Mihalcea (also Episode 31), Professor U. Michigan
• Tal Rabin (also Episode 27), Head of Research at Algorand Foundation, and Professor at U. Penn
• Regina Barzilay (also Episode 27), Professor at MIT
• Moshe Vardi (also Episode 27), Professor at Rice Univ.
• Thamar Solorio, Professor U. Houston

Useful and Relevant Links

• A great book on how startups often start at a random point, and then pivot over their lifetime: Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days, Jessica Livingstone. [Amazon]

Recently on Season 2

Season 2 featured 22 episodes where we visited 5 continents, and 7 countries. Check them out!

• Remix Episodes: [Impostor Syndrome 2] [Comparing oneself to others]
• Anonymous 2 (Finale of Season 2): Featuring multiple anonymous stories and a hate mail response from the host [Episode 36}
• Central America and South America: 2 Episodes
  • Interview with Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Prof. Northeastern (Silicon Valley), Entrepreneur, Yahoo! Labs Worldwide VP and Leader. Immigrant from Chile. [Episode 35]
  • Interview with Thamar Solorio, Prof U. Houston and stalwart researcher in NLP and ML. Immigrant from Mexico. [Episode 34]
• Romania Segment: 3 Episodes
  • Interview with Rada Mihalcea, Prof U. Michigan, and stalwart researcher in NLP and ML. [Episode 33]
  • Interview with Ion Stoica, Founder/Creator of Apache Spark, Ray, Mesos, and founder of Databricks, Anyscale, Conviva. Prof at UC Berkeley. [Episode 32]
  • From Romania: Episode featuring 2 distinguished Computer Scientists (Ion Stoica, Rada Mihalcea). [Episode 31]
• 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 13 episodes where we visited 5 continents, and 7 countries. Check them out!

• Remix Episodes featuring Impostor Syndrome, Balkan Wars, Wars in Lebanon and Egypt, Industry vs. Academia, Computer Science in 1970s and 80s, Diversity and IOI, PhD and Entrepreneurship.
• Several anonymous narrators, from across many continents. (Episode 15).
• Our interview with Danqi Chen, Gold Medal winner at IOI (Informatics Olympiad) in 2008 (only woman Gold medal winner), and student in famous Yao Class at Tsinghua University. (Episode 14).
• Our interview with Jelani Nelson, “immigrant” from US Virgin Islands and creator of AddisCoder program in Ethiopia (Episode 13), especially his last segment on IOI data inequity analysis.
• Our third segment (Episodes 9, 10, 11, 12) on Middle East, featuring entrepreneurs and a famous academic family from Iran, Lebanon, and Egypt, starting with the Middle East Entrepreneurs lead episode.
• Our second 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.
• Our 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 of the Milky Way, photographed in Death Valley National Park in 2016 by Indranil Gupta.

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