May 11, 2022 / Podcast Episode

Episode 35: Ricardo-Baeza Yates Interview | From Chile

In this episode: Interview with Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Faculty at Northeastern University (Silicon Valley). ACM Fellow and IEEE Fellow. Best-selling textbook author. Startup founder, Former Lead of Multiple Yahoo! Labs, and simultaneously Faculty in Chile, Spain, & USA. Has lived and worked on 4 continents (S America, N America, Europe, Oceania). Grew up in Chile.
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Episode Guide

In this Episode: Interview with Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Faculty at Northeastern University (Silicon Valley). [Wikipedia] [LinkedIn] [Twitter]. Founder of multiple startup companies. Author of popular textbook. Former Lead of Yahoo! Labs on 3 continents, and simultaneously Faculty in Chile, Spain, and USA. ACM Fellow and IEEE Fellow. Has lived and worked on 4 continents (S America, N America, Europe, Oceania). Grew up in Chile.

Topics in this Episode include: Amazing and humorous stories every 5 minutes in the episode! Turbulent childhood with a debilitating illness; Unusual School Curriculum; Growing up under the infamous dictatorship of Pinochet; Doing four degrees simultaneously in college, while supporting a family; Computing in the 1970s and 80s Chile; Seeking Political Asylum; Inventing an imaginary co-author for ethical reasons; Experiences working in both academia and industry; Experiences working across 4 continents; Failures; Impostor Syndrome. And much more! This episode is chock-full of interesting stories!

  • mm.ss: Segment Info (Index)
  • 0.00: Voices in this Episode
  • 3.25: Act 0 – Introduction and Biography
  • 7.37: Act 1 – A Very Difficult Early Childhood and Schooling in Santiago (Chile), 1960s and 70s
    • 7.49: “My Father left when I was 4 years old.” 
      • “With three younger sisters, I lived with four women.”
    • 8.42: “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.”
    • 9.52: The Family and Support
      • “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.”
  • 12.44: Act 2 – Unusual Experiences as a Child, 1960s and 1970s
    • 12.44: A very unusual School curriculum: School Headmaster died, and his wife (Winnifer) invented a new “renaissance” course
    • 16.26: Appearing on TV Quiz Show when he was 17 years. Competing against 30 year olds. Qualifying up to the penultimate episode, but getting eliminated on an unfair question.
      • “Question was: What is the antipode of Santiago, Chile?”
      • “I was an introvert… In the TV program I took my glasses out so I didn’t see the people. Seeing the people made me nervous.”
  • 21.37: Act 3 – First Experiences, 1960s and 1970s
    • 21.37: Spoken Languages in School: English, Spanish, French, (and later Portuguese, Catalan)
    • 22.58: First Encounters with Computers and Programming Language. WATFIV Language
    • 24.05: Wrongly accused of cheating in the Programming Language exam, because of Goto Labels
      • (Apologies for the background noise in this portion)
    • 25.33: Punched card computers
      • “They ran on 64 KB.”
  • 26.38: Act 4 – Doing Four Simultaneous Degrees in Universidad de Chile, 1979-1986
    • 26.38: Choosing Electrical Engineering in University, 1979
      • “I chose EE because it was the hardest one.”
      • “Normally I took 10 classes, instead of the normal 5.”
      • “I wanted to find my limits.” 
    • 28.56: Story of when he forgot there was an exam
    • 30.33: Married and with a kid: During the 4 degrees
      • “I have a motto – Just do it. Don’t think about it, because if you think about it – you’re already behind.” (Note: Ricardo says he was unaware of Nike’s motto at the time he coined his own motto!)
    • 32.42: How many women in Engineering and how hard was it for them in engineering?
  • 34.09: Act 5 – Pinochet’s Dictatorship and its effect on life, 1960s, 70s, 80s
    • 34.09: Coup d’etat in 1973 (which overthrew the democratic government and brought Pinochet to power)
      • “All of 1973 there was curfew, and there was no school.”
    • 36.26: University protected from Pinochet dictatorship, but many were opposed to the dictatorship
      • “The university was a sacred land for the police, but at the end they entered and took many people.”
    • 37.28: Story of when he almost became an army deserter
      • “I was an hour late… I ran to this place…begged them to let me in.”
    • 40.41: Religion and Career. His Mother being treated as second-class citizen because she was separated, but Catholic Church has no divorce
      • “(Mother) was one of the first librarians of the country. But because she was separated and Chile had no divorce, she could never become the director of a library, and she was always in second place.”
      • “It would be very difficult to be a Professor if you’re Catholic or Jewish, and you didn’t fulfill the commandments of your religion.”
    • 42.34: Politics interfering with the University: when Pinochet appointed the President and Dean instead of them being internally elected
    • 44.02: When the police arrested a Professor, and faculty went to rescue him
    • 45.02: Chile Monetary Crisis of 1982
    • 45.58: Did life change after 1989 referendum (end of Pinochet)
      • “The 1989 constitution was new but was written by Pinochet. One year ago (2021), Chile voted to write a new constitution.” [Chile Constitution 2021]
    • 47.27: Did the dictatorship support computing and tech?
      • “The most well-known research funding program started under Pinochet in 1981… and is stil, going on. At the same time more than 2000 people disappeared. What is the human cost? ”
      • Mentioned in this segment: Chicago Boys
    • 50.33: “Neo-capitalism” or “Hyper capitalism”: No regulation, open all borders
  • 52.47: Act 6 – Research Stories Galore! 1980s
    • 52.47: CS Research in Universidad de Chile, Early 1980s. 
      • “Doing a Masters thesis was like doing half a PhD. I was the second person who finished a Masters (in Computer Science), ever, in my university.”
    • 54.22: Moving to U. Waterloo, Canada in 1986-1989
      • Writing papers on topics outside his main research topic. In Robotics (The “Cow” Problem). 
    • 55.51: Accidentally seeking a political asylum in Canada! The Story.
      • “I forgot to renew my student visa and suddenly I was illegal in Canada.”
    • 56.56: When Ethics forces you to create a fictional author! The story of  “Paul S. Amerins”. 
      • The Paper with the imaginary author: On Efficient Entreeings, Paul S. Amerins, Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Derick Wood
      • “We will invent an author that will represent the course, and he will be the first author.”
  • 1.00.02: Act 7 – Returning to Chile after Canada PhD, 1989
    • 1.00.02: Was his political asylum an issue when he returned to Chile after U. Waterloo PhD?
    • 1.00.32: Wanting to return to Chile
      • “I was (in) the second generation of PhDs in Chile… My generation had six or seven PhDs who came back. The number of CS PhDs in Chile doubled!”
    • 1.01.40: In the wrong country for startup ideas: Doing Chile Startup Ventures in e-commerce and search
      • “I was in the wrong country for startups… I was in Chile. Not in Seattle or Silicon Valley.”
    • 1.03.59: Has the tech startup scene in Chile changed since 1990s through today? 
  • 1.05.23: Act 8 – Moving from Academia to Yahoo (Spain) to become VP and manage multiple Yahoo labs, 2005
    • 1.05.23: The chance event that caused his shift from academia to industry
    • 1.07.42:  Differences in Work Cultures: Silicon Valley, Barcelona, London, Israel, India
      • “I like geography… maybe everything I’ve been doing has been to travel. Because I love to travel. I’ve been in 85 countries, and I want to be in 100 before I die.”
    • 1.08.37: Why the Mediterranean work culture is his favorite
      • “You work to live and you don’t live to work.”
  • 1.09.51: Act 9 – Retrospective and Perspective
    • 1.09.51: How do you stay happy outside of work?
      • “I don’t plan much.”
      • “In developing countries you learn how to improvise very well.”
      • “We’re lucky to work on things we like!”
    • 1.11.40: Mentors and Role Models: Lots of names of collaborators!
      • “They taught me how to write papers… when I returned to Chile I went up very fast, because I knew how to write papers.”
    • 1.14.05: Spontaneous Idea to Write the book “Modern Information Retrieval”, which became a best-seller, late 1990s
      • “Let’s write a book together… But we don’t know all the topics!”
    • 1.15.56: Handling Failures and Rejections: The Story of the Distributed Search Architecture in Yahoo!
    • 1.18.34: Handling Impostor Syndrome: The Story of Chess
      • “In many ways you feel you are doing better than you should.”
      • “Just do it.”
      • “Don’t plan too ahead… I’m sure Obama never planned to be President.”
    • 1.23.14: Thoughts on Diversity in CS/STEM: 50% of his PhD students have been women
      • “If you see a potential in someone (and they don’t see in themselves), how to convince them (to realize that potential and follow the path).”
    • 1.26.49: If he  had grown up in the US (instead of Chile), all else being equal, would your life and career have been different?
      • “Maybe my career could have been faster.”
    • 1.29.06: “Sometimes capitalism forgets that we are still a tribe.”
  • 1.29.31: Ending and Thank You
Featured in this Episode
  • Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Faculty at Northeastern University (Silicon Valley). [Wikipedia] [LinkedIn] [Twitter]. Founder of multiple startup companies. Author of popular textbook. Former Lead of Multiple Yahoo! Labs, Faculty in Chile. ACM Fellow and IEEE Fellow. Has lived and worked on 4 continents (S and N America, Europe, Asia). Grew up in Chile.
    • Research Areas: Information Retrieval, Artificial Intelligence, Web search and mining, Algorithms and Data structures.
    • Awards
      • ACM Fellow (2009)
      • IEEE Fellow (2011)
      • 2012, he won, for the second edition of his best-seller book, called “Modern Information Retrieval”,  Best Information Science Book Award from the Association for Information Science and Technology.
      • Awards for his contributions in Latin America and Chile
        • 2009: CLEI Distinction to Achievements in Informatics, by Latin American Association of CS departments to people who have contributed to the development of CS in the region
        • 2010: National Award of the Chilean Association of Engineers
        • Founding member of the Chilean Academy of Engineering, formed in 2010
  • Ricardo Baeza-Yates’ Immigrant Journey
    • 1961: Born in Santiago, Chile, where he grew up in the 1960s and 1970s 
    • 1983: Bachelor in Computer Science, Universidad de Chile
    • 1983-1986: Doing 4 degrees simultaneously. M.Eng. in Electrical Engineering, MSc in Computer Science, and Electrical Engineer specialization, Universidad de Chile
    • 1986: Moved from Chile to Canada in for his PhD
    • 1986-1989: Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Waterloo, Canada
    • 1989: Returned to Chile to resume his Professor position at Universidad de Chile, Santiago
    • 1985-2004: Full time Professor at Universidad de Chile, where in 1994 he became the youngest-ever full professor. He continues to be part-time at his alma mater since 2004.
    • 2005: Yahoo! Research/Labs hired Ricardo as VP of Research to manage many of their new worldwide labs.
    • 2005-2014: Based in Barcelona, Spain and he: 
      • Supervised Yahoo! Labs London from its inception in 2012 and until 2015.
      • Supervised Yahoo! Labs Haifa, Israel, from its inception in 2008 and until 2012.
      • And also managed the Yahoo! labs in Santiago, and a team in San Francisco
    • 2016-2020: CTO of NTENT, a semantic search company
    • 2014-Present: Based in Silicon Valley, California, USA, where he is the holds a Director of Research of the Institute for Experiential AI at Northeastern University (Silicon Valley Campus)
Useful Links
Upcoming and Related Episodes

Look for our next episode, the season finale of Season 2!

If you liked this episode, you may also be interested in the Episodes on Brazil: Episodes 5, 6, 7, 8 featuring Computer Scientists from Brazil, all of whom spent careers in both academia and industry. You may also be interested in Episode 34, where we visited Mexico. 

Recently on Season 2
  • Latin America (Central and South America): 2 Episodes
    • Interview with Thamar Solorio, Prof U. Houston and stalwart researcher in NLP and ML. [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 22 episodes where we visited 5 continents, and 7 countries. Check them out!

 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