Episode 43: Illnesses

In this episode: Illnesses. Two Computer Scientists who encountered major illnesses in their lives (Tuberculosis, Breast Cancer) talk about how they navigated it, and used their survival experience to improve their education and research directions.  

Episode Guide

In this Episode: Two Computer Scientists who encountered major illnesses in their lives (Tuberculosis, Breast Cancer) talk about how they navigated it, and used their survival experience to improve their education and research directions. Features immigrants from Chile and Moldova+Israel. Featuring: Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Regina Barzilay. Remix Episode from Seasons 1 & 2.

• mm.ss: Segment Info (Index)
• 1.18: Act 0 – Introduction to Episode
• 2.22: Act 1 – Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Professor Northeastern University Silicon Valley, and Head of Yahoo! Labs in 4 continents (Immigrant from Chile) 
  • I got Tuberculosis…. 6 months in bed and 2 years treatment”“I was not formally in a school because of the illness… Wrote exams in a ministry.”
  • “My Mother had to work.”
  • “My grandfather taught me how to read and write… he used a dictionary and encyclopedia. Suddenly he died in an accident when I was 9.”
  •  “From that time geography started to be my hobby… I’m still a geography geek.”
  • “My grandmother had to work too, so I and my three sisters were raised by my four aunts.”
  • A very unusual School curriculum: School Headmaster died, and his wife (Winnifer) invented a new “renaissance” course
  • “Because of my illness I read a lot.”
  • Book mentioned in this segment: Sandokan by Salgari
• 10.05: Act 2 – Regina Barzilay, Professor at MIT (Immigrant from Moldova+Israel)
  • Being diagnosed with breast cancer. The biggest shock. Not believing that she is the 1 out of 8 who get breast cancer.
  • Thoughts of Mortality:“You don’t know. When you hear you have it, you stop believing the doctor. You forget probability.”
  • How her cancer motivated her to change her research career. She describes how she changed her research mid-stream, and how bootstrapped it.
  • Why her new research direction of medicine+ML research is fundamental research and not just “applied” research.
• 27.02: End.

Episodes Like This One 

This is a remix episode from Seasons 1 & 2. If you’re interested in hearing the full interviews with these three Computer Scientists, they are available in the links below (see “Recently on Season 1 & 2).

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

Featured in this Episode

• Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Professor Northeastern University Silicon Valley, and Head of Yahoo! Labs in 4 continents
• Regina Barzilay (also Episode 27), Professor at MIT

Useful and Relevant Links

• You may also like the following episodes that feature these guests
  • Ricardo Baeza-Yates Interview
  • Episode 27 (From Israel)
  • Regina Barzilay Interview

Recently on Season 2

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

• Remix Episodes: [Punched Cards!] [Alternate Realities] [Pregnancy and Career] [Random Ways to Start Research] [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}
• Latin America (Central 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 Lamprocapnos Spectabilis (aka Asian Bleeding Heart) flower. Pic taken by Indranil Gupta in his backyard garden.

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