ACM ByteCast

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Rashmi Mohan hosts software development productivity expert Nicole Forsgren, Senior Director of Developer Intelligence at Google. Forsgren co-founded DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA), a Google Cloud team that utilizes opinion polling to improve software delivery and operations performance. Forsgren also serves on the ACM Queue Editorial Board. Previously, she led productivity efforts at Microsoft and GitHub, and was a tenure track professor at Utah State University and Pepperdine University. Forsgren co-authored the award-winning book Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps and the recently published Frictionless: 7 Steps to Remove Barriers, Unlock Value, and Outpace Your Competition in the AI Era. In this interview, Forsgren shares her journey from psychology and family science to computer science and how she became interested in evidence-based arguments for software delivery methods. She discusses her role at Google utilizing emerging and agentic workflows to improve internal systems for developers. She reflects on her academic background, as the idea for DORA emerged from her PhD program, and her time at IBM. Forsgren also shares the relevance of the DORA metrics in a rapidly changing industry, and how she's adjusting her framework to adapt to new AI tools.

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Rashmi Mohan hosts 2024 ACM A.M. Turing Andrew laureates Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton. They received the Turing Award for developing the conceptual and algorithmic foundations of reinforcement learning, a computational framework that underpins modern AI systems such as AlphaGo and ChatGPT. Barto is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His honors include the UMass Neurosciences Lifetime Achievement Award, the IJCAI Award for Research Excellence, and the IEEE Neural Network Society Pioneer Award. He is a Fellow of IEEE and AAAS. Sutton is a Professor in Computing Science at the University of Alberta, a Research Scientist at Keen Technologies (an artificial general intelligence company) and Chief Scientific Advisor of the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii). In the past he was a Distinguished Research Scientist at Deep Mind and served as a Principal Technical Staff Member in the AI Department at the AT&T Shannon Laboratory. His honors include the IJCAI Research Excellence Award, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Canadian Artificial Intelligence Association, and an Outstanding Achievement in Research Award from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Sutton is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, AAAI, and the Royal Society of Canada. In the interview, Andrew and Richard reflect on their long collaboration together and the personal and intellectual paths that led both researchers into CS and reinforcement learning (RL), a field that was once largely neglected. They touch on interdisciplinary explorations across psychology (animal learning), control theory, operations research, cybernetics, and how these inspired their computational models. They also explain some of their key contributions to RL, such as temporal difference (TD) learning and how their ideas were validated biologically with observations of dopamine neurons. Barto and Sutton trace their early research to later systems such as TD-Gammon, Q-learning, and AlphaGo and consider the broader relationship between humans and reinforcement learning-based AI, and how theoretical explorations have evolved into impactful applications in games, robotics, and beyond.

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, our special guest host Scott Hanselman (of The Hanselminutes Podcast) welcomes ACM Fellow Dawn Song, Professor in Computer Science at UC Berkeley, Co-Director of Berkeley Center for Responsible Decentralized Intelligence (RDI), and Founder of Oasis Labs. Her research interest lies in AI safety and security, Agentic AI, deep learning, security and privacy, and decentralization technology. Dawn is the recipient of numerous awards including the MacArthur Fellowship, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the NSF CAREER Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the MIT Technology Review TR-35 Award, ACM SIGSAC Outstanding Innovation Award, and more than 10 Test-of-Time awards and Best Paper awards from top conferences in Computer Security and Deep Learning. She has been recognized as Most Influential Scholar (AMiner Award) for being the most cited scholar in computer security. Dawn is an IEEE Fellow and an Elected Member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is also a serial entrepreneur and has been named on the Female Founder 100 List by Inc. and Wired25 List of Innovators. Dawn shares her academic journey in cybersecurity, which used to be a much smaller field and how the MacArthur Fellowship (aka the “Genius Grant”) and other prestigious recognitions enabled her to pursue impactful multidisciplinary research. Dawn and Scott cover a myriad of topics around Agentic AI, including current and future security vulnerabilities from AI-powered malicious attacks, Dawn’s popular MOOC at RDI, and the associated AgentX-AgentBeats global competition (with more than $1 million in prizes and resources) focused on standardized, reproducible agent evaluation benchmarks to advance the field as a public good. AgentX-AgentBeats Agentic AI Competition Berkeley RDI Agentic AI MOOC

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Bruke Kifle hosts Russ Cox, Distinguished Engineer at Google. Previously, he was the Go language technical lead at Google, where he led the development of Go for more than a decade, with a particular focus on improving the security and reliability of using software dependencies. With Jeff Dean, he created Google Code Search, which let developers grep the world's public source code. He also worked for many years on the Plan 9 operating system from Bell Labs and holds degrees from Harvard and MIT. Russ is a member of the ACM Queue Editorial Board. In the interview, Russ details his journey from the Commodore 64 to Bell Labs, where he met Rob Pike (a co-designer of Go) and contributed to Plan 9 working alongside other legendary figures. Russ shares lessons learned while working on Google Code Search (a highly complex C++ program) and how that informed his later approach to the development and evolution of Go. They delve into the role of Go in the AI era and the future of computing. Russ also discusses the open-source community and collaboration around Go, touches on mentorship and leadership, and offers advice for aspiring builders.

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Rashmi Mohan hosts Anusha Nerella, a Senior Principal Engineer at State Street. She has more than 13 years of experience working on building scalable systems using AI/ML in the domain of high-frequency trading systems and is passionate about driving adoption of automation in the FinTech industry. Anusha is a member of the ACM Practitioner Board, the Forbes Technology Council, and is an IEEE Senior Member and Chair of IEEE Women in Engineering Philadelphia chapter. She has served as a judge in hackathons and devotes significant time mentoring students and professionals on the use of AI technologies, building enterprise-grade software, and all things FinTech. Anusha traces her journey from growing up with limited access to technology to teaching herself programming to working at global firms including Barclays and Citibank and leading enterprise-scale AI initiatives. Anusha and Rashmi discuss the challenges of applying AI to a field where money and personal data are at stake, and workflows that prioritize trust, security, and compliance. They touch on the importance of clear data lineage, model interpretability, and auditability. The discussion also covers observability, tooling, and the use of LLMs in finance. Along the way, Anusha shares her personal philosophy when it comes to building systems where speed and reliability can be competing priorities.

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Bruke Kifle hosts 2024 ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award recipient Ilias Diakonikolas, Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he researches the algorithmic foundations of machine learning and statistics. Ilias received the prestigious award for developing the first efficient algorithms for high-dimensional statistical tasks that are also robust, meaning they perform well even when the data significantly deviates from ideal modelling assumptions. His other honors and recognitions include a Sloan Fellowship, the NSF CAREER Award, the best paper award at NeurIPS 2019, and the IBM Research Pat Goldberg Best Paper Award. He authored a textbook titled Algorithmic High-Dimensional Robust Statistics. In the interview, Ilias describes his early love of math as a student in Greece, which led him on a research journey in theoretical statistics and algorithms at Columbia University and, later, at UC Berkeley. He defines “robust statistics” and how it aids in detecting “data poisoning.” Ilias and Bruke explore statistical v. computational efficiency, the practical applications of this research in machine learning and trustworthy AI, and future directions in algorithmic design. Ilias also offers valuable advice to future researchers.

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Bruke Kifle hosts ACM Distinguished Member Cecilia Aragon, Professor in the Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering and Director of the Human-Centered Data Science Lab at the University of Washington (UW). She is the co-inventor (with Raimund Seidel) of the treap data structure, a binary search tree in which each node has both a key and a priority. She is also known for her work in data-intensive science and visual analytics of very large data sets, for which she received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2008. Prior to her appointment at UW, she was a computer scientist and data scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and NASA Ames Research Center, and before that, an airshow and test pilot, entrepreneur, and member of the United States Aerobatic Team. She is a co-founder of Latinas in Computing. Cecilia shares her journey into computing, starting as a math major at Caltech with a love of the Lisp programming language, to vital work innovating data structures, visual analytics tools for astronomy (Sunfall), and augmented reality systems for aviation. She highlights the importance of making data science more human-centered and inclusive practices in design. Cecilia discusses her passion for broadening participation in computing for young people, a mission made more personal when she realized she was the first Latina full professor in the College of Engineering at UW. She also talks about Viata, a startup she co-founded with her son, applying visualization research from her lab to help people solve everyday travel planning challenges. We want to hear from you!

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Bruke Kifle hosts 2024 ACM Prize in Computing recipient Torsten Hoefler, a Professor of Computer Science at ETH Zurich (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), where he serves as Director of the Scalable Parallel Computing Laboratory. He is also the Chief Architect for AI and Machine Learning at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS). His honors include the Max Planck-Humboldt Medal, an award for outstanding mid-career scientists; the IEEE CS Sidney Fernbach Award, which recognizes outstanding contributions in the application of high-performance computers; and the ACM Gordon Bell Prize, which recognizes outstanding achievement in high-performance computing. He is a member of the European Academy of Sciences (Academia Europaea), a Fellow of IEEE, and a Fellow of ACM. In the interview, Torsten reminisces on early interest with multiple computers to solve problems faster and on building large cluster systems in graduate school that were later turned into supercomputers. He also delves into high-performance computing (HPC) and its central role in simulation and modeling across all modern sciences. Bruke and Torsten cover the various requirements that power HPC, the intersection of HPC and recent innovations in AI, and his key contributions in popularizing 3D parallelism for training AI models. Torsten highlights challenges, such as AI’s propensity to cheat, as well as the promise of turning reasoning models into scientific collaborators. He also offers advice to young researchers on balancing academic learning with industry exposure. We want to hear from you!

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Bruke Kifle hosts 2024 ACM Athena Lecturer and ACM Eugene L. Lawler Award recipient Maja Matarić, the Chan Soon-Shiong Chaired and Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, Neuroscience, and Pediatrics at the University of Southern California (USC), and a Principal Scientist at Google DeepMind. Maja is a roboticist and AI researcher known for her work in human-robot interaction for socially assistive robotics, a field she pioneered. She is the founding director of the USC Robotics and Autonomous Systems Center and co-director of the USC Robotics Research Lab. Maja is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AMACAD), Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), IEEE, AAAI, and ACM. She received the US Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM) from President Obama in 2011. She also received the Okawa Foundation, NSF Career, the MIT TR35 Innovation, the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Career, and the Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Innovation Awards, among others, and is an ACM Distinguished Lecturer. She is featured in the documentary movie Me & Isaac Newton. In the interview, Maja talks about moving to the U.S. from Belgrade, Serbia and how her early interest in both computer and behavioral sciences led her to socially assistive robotics, a field she saw as measurably helpful. She discusses the challenges of social assistance as compared to physical assistance and why progress in the field is slow. Maja explains why Generative AI is conducive to creating socially engaging robots, and touches on the issues of privacy, bias, ethics, and personalization in the context of assistive robotics. She also shares some concerns about the future, such as the dehumanization of AI interactions, and also what she’s looking forward to in the field. We want to hear from you!

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Rashmi Mohan hosts ACM Fellow and 2016 ACM Software System Award recipient Alfred Spector, Professor of Practice in the MIT EECS Department. He was previously CTO of Two Sigma Investments, and before that Vice President of Research and Special Initiatives at Google. Alfred played a key role in developing the Andrew File System (AFS), a breakthrough in distributed computing that later became a commercial venture. He is also known for coining the term “CS + X.” He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Hertz Foundation, and National Academy of Engineering, and recipient of the IEEE Kanai Award for Distributed Computing. Alfred recounts how he initially pursued programming out of personal enjoyment in college. He talks about developing AFS at Carnegie Mellon University, the challenges of turning academic research into commercial products, and the transition from academia to entrepreneurship, sharing some of the lessons learned along the way. Alfred touches on his time at IBM, which acquired his startup Transarc, and the differences between startups and large corporations. He also talks about some of his most notable work as a technical leader at Google, such as Google Translate. Finally, he offers a unique perspective on the rapid evolution of AI and advocates for a more multidisciplinary approach for developing responsible technology. “Google’s hybrid approach to research” paper “More Than Just Algorithms” (ACM Queue article)

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Rashmi Mohan hosts Henrique Malvar, a signal processing researcher at Microsoft Research (Emeritus). He spent more than 25 years at Microsoft as a distinguished engineer and chief scientist, leading the Redmond, Washington lab (managing more than 350 researchers). At Microsoft, he contributed to the development of audio coding and digital rights management for the Windows Media Audio, Windows Media Video, and to image compression technologies, such as HD Photo/JPEG XR formats and the RemoteFX bitmap compression, as well as to a variety of tools for signal analysis and synthesis. Henrique is also an Affiliate Professor at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Washington and a member of the National Academy of Engineers. He has published over 180 articles, has been issued over 120 patents, and has been the recipient for countless awards for his service. Henrique explains his early love of electrical engineering, building circuits from an early age growing up in Brazil, and later fulfilling his dream of researching digital signal processing at MIT. He describes his work as Vice President for Research and Advanced Technology at PictureTel, one of the first commercial videoconferencing product companies (later acquired by Polycom) and stresses the importance of working with customers to solve a variety of technical challenges. Henrique also shares his journey at Microsoft, including working on videoconferencing, accessibility, and machine learning products. He also offers advice to aspiring researchers and emphasizes the importance of diversity to research and product teams.

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, our special guest host Scott Hanselman (of The Hanselminutes Podcast) welcomes Kate Kallot, founder and CEO of Amini, an impact-driven AI company based in Nairobi, which focuses on the critical issue of data scarcity in Africa and its implications for AI development. Before Amini, her career spanned leadership positions at global tech companies, including NVIDIA, where she led global developer relations and expansion into emerging markets, and Arm, where she was a pivotal figure in the Tiny Machine Learning (TinyML) movement. At Intel, she led the development of the world’s first AI development kit in a USB form factor, the Neural Compute Stick, bringing computer vision and Al to IoT and edge devices to millions for the first time. Kate is a recognized expert and influencer in the AI field, advising international organizations and governments on the potential and challenges of AI for good. Her work has been recognized by TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in AI, the World Economic Forum as a Tech Pioneer, and One Young World as Entrepreneur of the Year 2024. A trusted voice in global AI policy and digital equity, Kate serves as Vice Chair of the ICC Global Environmental and Energy Commission and is a member of EY’s Global AI Advisory Council. In the interview, Kate explains the barriers to AI adoption in Africa, stemming from challenges with digital and environmental data infrastructure. She shares her work collecting and validating data in key areas such as climate and agriculture through state-of-the-art technologies and partnerships with private companies, using a bottom-up approach. Kate and Scott also talk about Amini’s commitment to open source and community collaboration in areas such as geospatial data science, and the global applications of Amini’s work in Africa to other geographies with similar characteristics. We want to hear from you!

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Rashmi Mohan hosts ACM Fellow Michael J. Freedman, Robert E. Kahn Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University and co-Founder and CTO of Timescale. Michael’s research interests are in distributed systems, networking, and security. Over the course of his student and professional career, he designed and operated the Coral Content Distribution Network, a peer-to-peer content distribution network; co-founded (with Martin Casado) Illuminics Systems, an IP analytics company; and designed TimescaleDB and JetStream. His many honors and recognitions include the 2018 ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award, Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, and SIGOPS Mark Weiser Award. Michael shares what drew him to computer science, highlighting the value of initiative and gumption as an undergraduate student, and how he became interested in security and privacy, working on peer-to-peer systems before cloud computing became ubiquitous. He discusses his work on Coral CDN during his PhD research, applying research outcomes to build scalable systems and learning to harness customer feedback good user experience. Michael also talks extensively about Timescale, one of the fastest databases for real-time analytics, or time series data, and explains the roles of CTO and head engineer at a technology company.

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, our special guest host Scott Hanselman (of The Hanselminutes Podcast) welcomes ACM Fellow Peter Lee, President of Microsoft Research. As leader of Microsoft Research, Peter incubates new research-powered products and lines of business in areas such as AI, computing foundations, health, and life sciences. Before Microsoft, he established a new technology office that created operational capabilities in ML, data science, and computational social science at DARPA, and before that he was head of the CS department at CMU. Peter served on President Obama’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity and has testified before both the US House Science and Technology Committee and the US Senate Commerce Committee. He coauthored the bestselling book The AI Revolution in Medicine: GPT-4 and Beyond. In 2024, he was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in health and life sciences. In the interview, Peter reflects on his 40+ years in computer science, from working on PDP-11s and Commodore Amigas to modern AI advancements. He highlights how modern technologies, built on decades of research, have become indispensable. He also talks about his healthcare journey, including work that earned him election to the National Academy of Medicine, and the potential (and limitations) of AI in medicine. Peter and Scott touch on the impact of LLMs, the lack of ethics education in traditional CS curricula, the challenges posed by growing AI complexity. Peter also highlights some important Microsoft Research work in AI for Science and Quantum Computing.

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, our special guest host Scott Hanselman (of The Hanselminutes Podcast) welcomes Mary Lou Jepsen, CEO and Founder of Openwater, a technical executive and inventor in the fields of display, imaging, and computer hardware with about 300 patents published or issued to her name. She founded and led two moonshots at Google X and was later an executive at Facebook/Oculus VR. Prior to this, she was a professor at the MIT Media Lab, where she co-founded and was the first CTO of One Laptop per Child (OLPC), and later founded Pixel Qi in Taipei, Taiwan, focused on the design and manufacture of displays. Jepsen has been named as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine (“Time 100”), CNN’s top “10 thinkers” in science and technology and has won numerous awards numerous from professional societies in the fields of optics, display, and electronics. She’s a frequent keynote speaker, has given two highly viewed TED talks, and is frequently featured in top global press publications. Mary Lou discusses her work with Openwater, a startup working on innovative imaging technology using infrared light, ultrasound, and electromagnetics to diagnose and potentially treat diseases, and aims to leapfrog traditional drug development. She and Scott talk about the role of patents in manufacturing, and regulatory and technological barriers in healthcare innovation. They also dive into the advantages of the company’s open-source model, both for its software and hardware designs. Mary Lou highlights some of their breakthroughs, including stroke detection and non-invasive cancer treatment. She also talks about reducing cost and scaling production, next steps in clinical trials, and future possibilities with open source.

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Rashmi Mohan hosts Travis S. Humble, Director of the Quantum Science Center (QSC), a Distinguished Scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Director of the lab’s Quantum Computing Institute. He leads the development of new quantum technologies and infrastructure to impact the DOE mission of scientific discovery through quantum computing. As director of the QSC, Travis leads the innovation of scalable, resilient quantum information technologies through new materials, devices, and algorithms and facilitates the transfer of quantum technologies to the broadest audience. He also holds a joint faculty appointment with the University of Tennessee Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education working with students on energy-efficient computing solutions. Travis is Editor-in-Chief for ACM Transactions on Quantum Computing, Associate Editor for Quantum Information Processing, and Co-Chair of the IEEE Quantum Initiative. Travis describes his journey into quantum computing, which began in theoretical chemistry, where he studied quantum processes in chemical reactions. He explains the difference between classical and quantum computing and why quantum computing is particularly well suited for scientific applications such as drug discovery and energy solutions. He talks about Oak Ridge’s quantum computing resources and how researchers can access them. Travis also stresses the role education in advancing quantum computing and shares his predictions for its near future.

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Harald Störrle hosts Darja Smite, Professor of Software Engineering at Blekinge Institute of Technology and a part-time research scientist at SINTEF ICT. Darja is an expert on the future of work and the impact of globalization and offshoring in software companies. She has conducted research with and international companies such as ABB, Boss Media, CALVI, DXC, Emerson Process Management, Ericsson, SONY, Spotify, and, Telenor and has insights from cooperating with offshore vendors in India, China, Poland, Latvia, Ukraine and Russia. Darja shares her background, growing up in Latvia with a love for math, and later moving to Sweden for work and Norway to conduct research at SINTEF, one of Europe's largest independent research organizations. She shares some of her research findings on outsourcing and discusses the effect automation will have on outsourcing and profitability. She also discusses reasons why people stay or leave their jobs, as well as cultural differences and the challenge of people from different cultures finding common ground. Darja also touches on the impact of COVID on work practices in the past five years and offers advice for people considering a career in IT.

In this episode, part of a special collaboration between ACM ByteCast and the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA)’s For Your Informatics podcast, Sabrina Hsueh hosts accessibility researcher and inventor Chieko Asakawa, an IBM Fellow at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, the Chief Executive Director of The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan) in Japan, and an IBM Distinguished Service Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Chieko’s inventions include the Home Page Reader (HPR); a word processor for Braille documents; a digital library for Braille documents; an application to improve accessibility of streaming services; and, most recently, the AI Suitcase project. Her career has been recognized with numerous prestigious awards and honors, including becoming the first Japanese woman IBM Fellow in 2009, receiving the “Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon” from the Emperor of Japan in 2013, her induction into the US National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2019, being named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, and the ACM SIGACCESS Award for Outstanding Contributions to Computing and Accessibility in 2024. In the interview, Chieko shares how becoming blind early in life led her to work in accessibility research. She talks about her IBM team’s work on the Home Page Reader, the first practical voice browser to provide effective internet access for blind and visually impaired computer users, as well as more recent work on the AI suitcase, a robot that helps visually impaired people walk around and navigate independently. Chieko and Sabrina touch on AI’s potential in aiding accessibility and the inspiration for the AI Suitcase. She offers advice and best practices for both early and mid-career researchers and interdisciplinary professionals.

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Rashmi Mohan hosts Alvin Wang Graylin, Global VP of Corporate Development at HTC. Alvin is also Chairman of the Virtual World Society, Vice-Chair of the Industry of VR Alliance, and President of the Virtual Reality Venture Capital Alliance. Alvin is a leader in the virtual and augmented reality industries. As a serial entrepreneur, he founded four venture-backed startups across sectors including AI-driven conversational search, mobile social networks, ad tech, and big data AI analytics, spanning both China and the U.S. As an active investor, he funded more than 100 startups and played a pivotal role in the establishment of HTC’s ViveX Global VR accelerator and SOSV’s mobile internet investment incubator. A frequent keynote speaker at leading international conferences, Alvin is regularly featured in major media outlets, where he provides thought leadership on immersive computing (AR/VR/MR), AI, entrepreneurship, venture investing, and the Chinese market. His latest book, Our Next Reality, examines how AI and XR convergence will reshape society. He holds an M.S. in CS specializing in AI from MIT, an M.S. in Business from MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington, focusing on VR, AI, and CPU architecture. Alvin describes his early introduction to technology and computers after immigrating to the U.S. from China and later working at the first VR-focused research lab outside the military at the University of Washington. He highlights some of his pioneering contributions to the consumer PC, mobile, and internet industries in China, including helping establish Intel’s China office. Alvin explains how his background in NLP and AI helped him navigate and address the complexities of Chinese as a language for mobile search and shares some milestones from his work in China, at companies he founded and later at HTC. He touches on the early challenges and limitations of VR, progress made, and its exciting future promise. He also discusses some major advancements in XR technology, its transformative potential for education, and explains the synergy between AI and XR and the need for positive adoption at this pivotal moment in technological history.

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Bruke Kifle hosts ACM Fellow and ACM Distinguished Service Award recipient Jennifer Chayes, Dean of the College of Computing, Data Science, and Society at UC Berkeley. Before joining Berkeley, she co-founded the Theory Group at Microsoft Research Redmond and later founded and led three interdisciplinary labs: Microsoft Research New England, New York City, and Montreal. Her research areas include phase transitions in CS, structural and dynamical properties of networks including graph algorithms, and applications of ML. Jennifer is one of the inventors of the field of graphons, widely used for the ML of large-scale networks. Her recent work includes generative AI and ML theory in areas like cancer, immunotherapy, climate change, and ethical decision making, with more than 150 scientific papers authored and 30 patents she co-invented. Her honors and recognitions include the Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Leadership Award, SIAM’s John von Neumann Lecture Award (the highest honor bestowed by SIAM), and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. She serves on numerous boards and advisory committees and has served on the ACM A.M. Turing Award Selection Committee. Jennifer shares her early experience as the child of Iranian immigrants, dropping out of high school and learning to embrace risk. She describes her journey from being a pre-med biology major to a PhD in mathematical physics, and how her love of theory and an interest in interdisciplinary work led her to start a Theory Group at Microsoft Research. She also relates how her later interest in economics and game theory led to the founding of Microsoft Research New England, and highlights some of her work there. She and Bruke talk about the challenges she has navigated throughout her career, and how that has influenced her approach to interdisciplinary research. Jennifer also shares her vision and goals for the College of Computing, Data Science, and Society at UC Berkeley. Finally, she opines on the skills needed for future leaders in computing, some of the urgent problems of our time, and offers some advice to young computing professionals.