ACM ByteCast

Matei Zaharia - Episode 32

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Bruke Kifle hosts Matei Zaharia, computer scientist, educator, and creator of Apache Spark. Matei is the Chief Technologist and Co-Founder of Databricks and an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Stanford. He started the Apache Spark project during his PhD at UC Berkeley in 2009 and has worked broadly on other widely used data and machine learning software, including MLflow, Delta Lake, and Apache Mesos. Matei's research was recognized through the 2014 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award, an NSF Career Award, and the US Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.

Matei, who was born in Romania and grew up mostly in Canada, describes how he developed Spark, a framework for writing programs that run on a large cluster of nodes and process data in parallel, and how this led him to co-found Databricks around this technology. Matei and Bruke also discuss the new paradigm shift from traditional data warehouses to data lakes, as well as his work on MLflow, an open-source platform for managing the end-to-end machine learning lifecycle. He highlights some recent announcements in the field of AI and machine learning and shares observations from teaching and conducting research at Stanford, including an important current gap in computing education.

Yaw Anokwa - Episode 31

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, our special guest host Scott Hanselman (of The Hanselminutes Podcast) welcomes research scientist, software engineer, and entrepreneur Yaw Anokwa. Yaw is the founder and CEO of ODK (Open Data Kit), the offline data collection platform that helps fight disease, poverty, and inequity. He holds a PhD in computer science from the University of Washington and likes to keep his bio short and sweet.

Yaw describes how he felt the urge to pivot his career into a direction of positive social impact as a graduate student at the University of Washington. A volunteer experience with Partners in Health in Rwanda and a software engineering internship at Google showed him the potential for technology to empower people and change lives—specifically through ODK—which became his chief project and passion. Yaw and Scott discuss ODK’s main differentiator, “powerful offline forms,” as well as user interface affordances made to customize ODK for its users, such as rural farmers in Uganda. He also shares the joy of working on a product that focuses on public good and some principles that have helped him to succeed.

Link: https://getodk.org/

Steve Nouri - Episode 30

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Rashmi Mohan hosts Steve Nouri, Founder of AI4Diversity, Founding Member of Hackmakers, and Chief AI Evangelist at Wand. He’s an award-winning technical leader, data scientist, academic, entrepreneur, and global leader on artificial intelligence. Nouri sits on the Forbes Technology Council, is a committee member at the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and was named ICT Professional of the Year Gold Disruptor in 2019 by the Australian Computer Society (ACS). With more than 1 million followers on LinkedIn, he is one of the most influential voices in AI and Data Science.

Steve describes his journey to computing, which started in his teens with computer games, and past work experiences including leading data projects at Data61, Australia’s leading digital research network. He speaks about the importance of building your brand online and how it can create more opportunities for computing professionals. Steve and Rashmi also discuss his Hackmakers hackathons, created during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, he shares his big hopes for AI4Diversity, the growing non-profit organization he founded, with more than 10,000 volunteers from various backgrounds that engage and educate diverse communities about AI to benefit global society.

Links:
AI4Diversity
Hackmakers

Nuria Oliver - Episode 29

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Rashmi Mohan hosts Nuria Oliver, Chief Scientific Adviser in Data Science at the Vodafone Institute, Chief Data Scientist at Data-Pop Alliance, Scientific Director and Co-Founder of ELLIS (the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems), and Director of the ELLIS Alicante Foundation (the Institute of Humanity-centric AI). Recently, she co-led the winning team of the XPRIZE Pandemic Response Challenge, ValenciaIA4COVID. She has more than 25 year of research experience in AI, HCI, and Mobile Computing. Oliver is the first woman computer scientist in Spain to be named both an ACM Distinguished Scientist and an ACM Fellow. Her research has contributed to the development of intelligent multimodal interfaces, context-aware mobile computing applications, personalized services, and Big Data for Social Good. She holds more than 40 patents and many awards, including the King James I Award in New Technologies and the Abie Technology Leadership Award from AnitaB.org.

Nuria, who was always fascinated by the idea of investigating and solving unsolved problems, shares how she fell in love with AI while studying telecommunications engineering and highlights some of her earlier work on smart cars, smart rooms, and smart clothes. She talks about her recent work helping the government in Valencia, Spain to develop evidence-based policies using data science that were instrumental during the COVID-19 Pandemic, as well as the Data-Pop Alliance, an initiative created by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, MIT Media Lab, and the Overseas Development Institute to use data for social good. Nuria also stresses the importance of inspiring girls to pursue computer science and her own efforts in advocating for diversity in the field.

Michelle Zhou - Episode 28

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, our new co-host Bruke Kifle, AI Product Manager at Microsoft and member of the ACM Practitioner Board, interviews Michelle Zhou, Co-founder and CEO of Juji, Inc. She is an expert in the field of Human-Centered AI, an interdisciplinary area that intersects AI and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Zhou has authored more than 100 scientific publications on subjects including conversational AI, personality analytics, and interactive visual analytics of big data. Her work has resulted in a dozen widely used products or solutions and 45 issued patents. Prior to founding Juji, she spent 15 years at IBM Research and the Watson Group, where she managed the research and development of Human-Centered AI technologies and solutions, including IBM RealHunter and Watson Personality Insights. Zhou serves as Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems (TiiS) and an Associate Editor of ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology (TIST), and was formerly the Steering Committee Chair for the ACM International Conference Series on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI). She is an ACM Distinguished Member and Member at Large on the ACM Council.

Michelle presents five inflection points that led to her current work, including the impact of two professors in graduate school who helped her find her direction in AI. She explains what no-code AI means, why the ability for users to customize AI without having coding skills is important, and responds to the critics of no-code AI. Bruke and Michelle then delve into the inception of her AI company that develops AI assistants with cognitive intelligence, Juji, and how it is being used as a platform to introduce AI to early education. Finally, Michelle shares thoughts on the future of software and the no-code movement, as well as the future of AI itself.

Charu Thomas - Episode 27

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, our special guest host Scott Hanselman (of The Hanselminutes Podcast) welcomes Charu Thomas, Founder and CEO of Ox. Charu is an entrepreneur, researcher, and hacker. Her honors and recognitions include the ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC) 2018 Best Paper award, Forbes 30 Under 30, TechCrunch’s SF Disrupt Top Pick in Retail/E-commerce, winner of the Atlanta Startup Battle 3.0, and Collegiate Inventors Competition Finalist.

Charu shares how she got interested in wearable computing while pursuing a degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. She explains how her research with Thad Starner, the inventor of Google Glass, led her to develop an augmented reality platform for order picking, and a vision to build the tools retailers need to transform their brick-and-mortar stores into micro-distribution centers. Charu highlights some people who have been instrumental in her journey from student to CEO, and some of the tools and tricks she’s learned along the way.

Links:
Charu Thomas' award-winning paper in ACM Digital Library.
Charu's blog on order picking.

Shyam Gollakota - Episode 26

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Rashmi Mohan hosts 2020 ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award recipient Shyam Gollakota. He is a Torode Professor and leads the Networks and Mobile Systems Lab at the University of Washington's Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. Shyam is the recipient of many awards and recognitions, including a SIGMOBILE Rockstar award, 2021 Moore Inventor Fellowship, MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35, Popular Science ‘brilliant 10,’ and the Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list (twice). His group’s research has earned Best Paper awards at many top conferences, appeared in interdisciplinary journals like Nature, Nature Communications, Science Translational Medicine, and Science Robotics, and was named as an MIT Technology Review Breakthrough Technology of 2016 as well as Popular Science top innovations in 2015. Shyam's research covers a variety of topics, including mobile machine learning, networking, human-computer interaction, battery-free computing, and mobile health. He works across multiple disciplines including computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, biology, and medicine. His work has been licensed by ResMed Inc, led to three startups (Jeeva Wireless, Sound Life Sciences, and Wavely Diagnostics), and is in use by millions of users.

Shyam, who didn’t know how to type on a keyboard until the age of 16, relates how he got into CS and discovered that more than just programming, it's also a toolkit people can use to build systems like an artist and solve some of the world’s most pressing problems. He describes his work around the ambient backscatter, which uses existing radio frequency signals to power devices, and wind dispersal powered devices (and how the common dandelion provided inspiration for this research). Shyam and Rashmi also talk about his work on devices used for sleep apnea and tracking and the broader promise of ubiquitous computing in healthcare, such as democratizing medical attention to areas that don’t have the same resources as the Western world. Finally, Shyam gives some insights into the entrepreneurial journey and looks toward the future of healthcare technology.

Margo Seltzer - Episode 25

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Rashmi Mohan hosts ACM Fellow Margo Seltzer, co-recipient of the 2020 ACM Software System Award (shared with Mike Olson of Cloudera and Keith Bostic of MongoDB). She is the Canada 150 Research Chair in Computer Systems and the Cheriton Family Chair in Computer Science at the University of British Columbia. Previously, Seltzer was the Herchel Smith Professor of Computer Science at Harvard University’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Director at the Center for Research on Computation and Society. She is especially renowned for her work on log-structured file systems, databases, and wide-scale caching. Seltzer was previously CTO of Sleepycat Software, developers of the BerkeleyDB embedded database, later acquired by Oracle Corporation. Among her many honors, she is the recipient of the 2020 SIGMOD Systems Award and was recently named one of the “Top 20 Canadian Women in Cyber Security” by IT World Canada.

In the wide-ranging interview, Margo discusses her early years growing up in a high-achieving family and later studying applied mathematics at Harvard (before they had a CS major). She also recalls the amazing time in grad school studying under four legendary professors (including her advisor, Michael Stonebraker), and the origins of BerkeleyDB, which started as a graduate student open-source project and later became Sleepycat Software. Margo emphasizes the importance of taking risks and getting out of your comfort zone (and comfort research area) and inter-disciplinary collaboration, something she encourages in mentoring her students and junior colleagues. She also stresses the responsibility that comes with success and the value of mentoring students and providing guidance for impactful roles in service as well as research.

Wendy Chapman - Episode 24

In this episode, the first of a special collaboration between ACM ByteCast and the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA)’s For Your Informatics podcast, hosts Karmen Williams and Sabrina Hsueh welcome Wendy Chapman, Associate Dean of Digital Health and Informatics at the University of Melbourne and Director of the Centre for Digital Transformation of Health. Her research focuses on developing computer algorithms to understand information typed into electronic medical records and natural language processing of clinical texts. She is an elected fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and the US National Academy of Medicine.

Wendy discusses her journey from an undergraduate background in linguistics and Chinese literature to completing a PhD in Medical Informatics at the University of Utah and learning to program from scratch. She also describes moving to Australia when saw an opportunity to grow the field of digital health in Melbourne. She identifies the most pressing issues she is faced with in her new role and provides valuable advice based on her most impactful career moves. Wendy also shares with Karmen and Sabrina the development of the Digital Health Validitron at the University of Melbourne, which will guide innovators through questions in order to obtain funding and reimbursement. Finally, she identifies the areas in which ACM and AMIA can partner together in order to create a real impact in the field.

David Heinemeier Hansson - Episode 23

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Rashmi Mohan hosts David Heinemeier Hansson, cofounder and CTO of Basecamp. In addition to his work on this popular project management application, he is also the creator of the open-source web framework Ruby on Rails, used by some of the best-known technology companies, such as Twitter, Shopify, GitHub, Airbnb, and Square, and more than a million other web applications. He is also a prolific author of multiple bestselling books on building and running a successful business, as well as a Le Mans class-winning racecar driver.

David recounts discovering Ruby in the early 2000s and using it to create Basecamp, work which spawned Ruby on Rails. He dives into the process of creating Basecamp, whose aim was to solve the problem of communication with clients, as well as building a self-sustaining community with Ruby on Rails. He also explains his personal approach to open-source software, one of his passions. David also looks back on lessons he learned in business school—including the marketing aspect of technology—and how he applied these lessons to building his own business. He also reveals his experience with remote work and what he’s most excited about for the future.