ACM ByteCast

2022 ACM Fellow Ranveer Chandra discusses his journey from India to leading Microsoft's Agri-Food initiatives. He talks about using AI to empower farmers, bridging connectivity gaps with TV white spaces, and the transformative potential of AI in agriculture and food production.

Yael Tauman Kalai, a cryptography expert, discusses her career journey, work on blockchain privacy with ring signatures, concerns around quantum computing, and exciting emerging areas in cryptography. She touches on the balance between academia and industry, verification methods, and the intersection of AI and cryptography.

Noriko Arai, a professor in the Information and Society Research Division of the National Institute of Informatics in Tokyo, Japan, discusses being a creative in academia, the impact of AI, mentors and colleagues who inspired her, essential skills and ethics in AI research, and the challenges faced by female researchers in IT and the gender gap in Japan.

Eugenio Zuccarelli, Data Science Manager at CVS Health, discusses his early passions in engineering and technology, his work on MIT Media Lab's Project US, challenges and concerns across different industries such as data sharing and privacy, and the importance of trust in data sharing in healthcare. He also explores the risks and challenges of using synthetic data in research and the need for adapting skills and attitude in corporate settings. The chapter concludes by emphasizing the significance of students acquiring real-life application knowledge alongside technical expertise and the potential of AI and machine learning in healthcare.

Regina Barzilay, School of Engineering Distinguished Professor of AI & Health at MIT, discusses her journey to develop an AI-based system for early detection of breast cancer. She explores challenges in clinical AI and the promise of ChatGPT in healthcare. She also addresses the need to mitigate inequity in medicine while advancing clinical AI.

Host Bruke Kifle interviews Kush Varshney, a distinguished research scientist at IBM Research. They discuss responsible AI, operationalizing RAI principles, risks of generative AI, and coordinating AI safety. Kush also shares insights from his book 'Trustworthy Machine Learning' and his work with IBM's Science for Social Good initiative.

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Rashmi Mohan hosts Anima Anandkumar, a Bren Professor of Computing at California Institute of Technology (the youngest named chair professor at Caltech) and the Senior Director of AI Research at NVIDIA, where she leads a group developing the next generation of AI algorithms. Her work has spanned healthcare, robotics, and climate change modeling. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an NSF Career Award, and was most recently named an ACM Fellow, among many other prestigious honors and recognitions. Her work has been extensively covered on PBS, in Wired magazine, MIT Tech Review, YourStory, and Forbes, with a focus on using AI for good. Anima talks about her journey, growing up in a house where computer science was a way of life and family members who served as strong role models. She shares her path in education and research at the highly selective IIT-Madras, the importance of a strong background in math in her computing work, and some of the breakthrough moments in her career, including work on using tensor algorithms to process large datasets. Anima spends some time discussing topic modeling and reinforcement learning, what drives her interests, the possibilities of interdisciplinary collaboration, and the promise and challenges brought about by the age of generative AI.

In this episode, part of a special collaboration between ACM ByteCast and the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA)’s For Your Informatics podcast, hosts Sabrina Hsueh and Adela Grando welcome Mor Peleg, Professor of Information Systems at the University of Haifa and Founding Director and Head of its Data Science Research Center. She is Editor in Chief of the Journal of Biomedical Informatics and an international fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI). She received AMIA's New Investigator Award for work on the GLIF3 guideline modeling language. Mor is a renowned researcher in clinical guideline-based decision support. Initially fascinated by biomedical engineering, Mor shares how she arrived at the intersection of information systems and medicine, after working in IT and completing her postdoctoral research at Stanford. She mentions her recent project, MobiGuide, which aims to narrow the gap between clinical guidance and patient needs by providing 24/7 decision support to patients and providers. Its current focus is on improving the mental wellbeing of cancer patients through evidence-based practices such as exercise, yoga, and positive psychology. Mor also shares advice for people (especially women) looking to work in interdisciplinary fields. She emphasizes the importance of health equity and how AI can be employed in the service of detecting unfairness.

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, our special guest host Scott Hanselman (of The Hanselminutes Podcast) welcomes 2022 ACM A.M. Turing Award Laureate Robert Metcalfe, Emeritus Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin and Research Affiliate in Computational Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Metcalfe received his Turing Award for the invention, standardization, and commercialization of Ethernet, the foundational technology of the Internet, which supports more than 5 billion users and enables much of modern life. His other honors include the National Medal of Technology, IEEE Medal of Honor, Marconi Prize, Japan Computer & Communications Prize, ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award, and IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal. He is a Fellow of the US National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Inventors, Consumer Electronics, and Internet Halls of Fame. In a wide-ranging interview, Bob reflects on his “Ethernet paper” with David Boggs from 1976, and how the interoperability and backward compatibility baked into the Ethernet allows the technology to hold up today, in the age of Netflix and Zoom. Bob also describes his most recent project, modeling geothermal wells as a computational engineer at MIT, with the aim of harnessing geothermal energy as an alternative to fossil fuels. Along the way, they touch on “stretch goals,” GPUs, and how far down “the stack” one needs to go to fully appreciate and understand a piece of technology.  Link: "Ethernet: Distributed Packet Switching for Local Computer Networks" (Metcalfe and Boggs' classic 1976 article in Communications of the ACM)

In this episode of ACMByteCast, Bruke Kifle hosts H.-S. Philip Wong, the Willard R. and Inez Kerr Bell Professor of Electrical Engineering in the School of Engineering at Stanford University. He is also Chief Scientist of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), where he was previously Vice President of Corporate Research. His works have contributed to advancements in nanoscale science and technology, semiconductor technology, solid-state devices, and electronic imaging. Philip’s current research covers a broad range of topics including carbon electronics, 2D layered materials, wireless implantable biosensors, directed self-assembly, device modeling, brain-inspired computing, non-volatile memory, and 3D system integration. He is an IEEE Fellow and has received numerous awards, including the J.J. Ebers Award, the IEEE Electron Devices Society’s highest honor recognizing outstanding technical contributions to the field of electron devices that have made a lasting impact. Philip starts by sharing how he entered the field of electrical engineering, fueled by an interest in science and physics. He talks about the key challenges of scaling down technologies and what he believes will be the next major technological breakthrough, which will create exciting opportunities for those just joining the industry. He discusses the potential of drawing inspiration from biological systems in designing better computing systems and developments in non-volatile memory. Philip also talks about exploring the practical applications of technology in his roles as Faculty Director for Stanford’s NanoFab Lab and Stanford SystemX Alliance, as well as at TSMC. Finally, he offers advice for aspiring engineers and touches on the ethical and environmental implications of some of the biggest emerging trends.