Like stories? About immigrants? Who are also Computer Scientists?
In my new podcast "Immigrant Computer Scientists" prominent Computer Scientists from academia+industry narrate their own immigration stories. Episodes soon!
@csimmigrant
#csimmigrant
It's a truly fascinating time to be working in Distributed Systems! Here's a reading list of 70+ Distributed Systems papers *mostly from conferences in just last 2 years*!
CS525 UIUC Spring 2024 Reading List: .
(Slides: see "Schedule" link inside doc).
Starbucks baristas' worst nightmare is an Indian name. So I usu give my name as sth like “Bob” at Starbucks. Then I promptly forget what name I gave them. The barista keeps calling for Bob for hours. And I keep wondering who’s this idiot Bob and why doesn’t he collect his drink?
The other day someone yelled at me, “Go back to where you came from. Go back to India!”
I yelled back, “Dude, have you seen the flight prices?! Can you like lend me a couple 1000 bucks to go back?”
I never heard from the guy again.
My first experience with
#ChatGPT
was both terrifyingly accurate and also depressingly reassuring that it has solved no real
#distributedsystems
problems.
What a great time to work in Distributed Systems!
Here's a reading list of 70+ Distributed Systems papers, *mostly from 2020 conferences*!
CS525 UIUC Reading List:
(For slides including some classroom discussion, see the "Schedule" link from the doc).
The distributed systems community is very collaborative, friendly, and fun. In fact, we have two awesome jokes about distributed systems, but we can’t decide which one to tell.
No money for college, started work after high school. With a CS PhD from
#Mexico
, she dreamt of becoming Prof, but rejected at all US univs. Meet Thamar Solorio
@thamar_solorio
Prof U
#Houston
, & Top NLP researcher! On
@csimmigrant
Episode 34! Listen free
"Cross-System Interaction (CSI) Failure" -- the name suggests severity. Lilia Tang (
@liliatangxy
) showed that interactions between interdependent systems are among the most vulnerable regions in the cloud. She practiced her
@EuroSys_conf
talk at
@IllinoisCS
Systems Reading Group.
Aug 8, 1998, NYC. Today is 25 yrs since I arrived in US from India.
As I walked out JFK into Queens, the first sound I heard were street musicians playing steel drums. To this day hearing steel drums instantly transports me back to Aug 8 1998.
(Convocation pic, IIT Madras ‘98)
Was blown away in my last
#distributedsystems
lecture yesterday, when so MANY students (20+) coming up afterwards and thanked me. One girl a Stats major who'd never taken a CS course, learnt Golang and built a distributed ML system via our 4 programming assignments!
@IllinoisCS
False! Reports of my Distributed Systems class having 250 students are grossly exaggerated. Actual number of enrolled students in my class Distributed Systems Fall 2022 is only 539. (This is an elective, and not a required course.)
What?! Our CSI paper just won the "Gilles Muller Best Artifact Award" at Eurosys 2023!
We are so honored, especially having known Gilles during his productive years, and how much he would have loved this paper.
Pic of
@liliatangxy
receiving the award:
She skipped many school classes, nearly failed AI class. Then Rada Mihalcea
@radamihalcea
got 2 PhDs (CS, Linguistics) and became a Prof! Also, you don't want to miss the story of chance that led her to immigrate! On
@csimmigrant
Episode 33! Listen free
With the brand new
#IoT
thermostat in my office, changing the temp is v easy! I just walk up to the thermostat, pull out my phone, & send email to Facilities&Services. A gentle technician soul appears in 10-500 mins, replete with ladder, fiddles around in ceiling. Voila! Heat!
@Dev14e
You gotta use a careful combo of RL, transformers, convolution, involution, neuromorphic compute, and zoomorphic memory. Thrown in some NFTs and a dash of blockchain, finish with IoT.
A few weeks ago, I posted that we had hired 15 new tenure-track faculty in the last 2 years. That's not all! We also hired amazing teaching and research faculty.
23 new faculty in 2 years means our department essentially grew by the size of a small department!
23 new faculty are joining
#IllinoisCS
, bringing expertise on topics ranging from online misbehavior to broadening participation in computing, climate forecasting to data-driven agriculture, human-robot interaction to machine learning, plus a lot more!
Keynote talk by awesome
@IllinoisCS
Asst Prof Deepak Vasisht
@deepakv91
at SatCom! (First Satellite Communication Workshop). Collocated with Mobicom 2023 in Madrid, Spain.
Deepak’s work is revolutionizing the way satellite companies tackle space, and time!
Academic collabs can be such fun! 3 consecutive days, 3 surprise notifications of papers accepted (Ubicomp, VLDB, Eurosys). 3 papers with 15 authors (I’m only common author across all 3!), 4 univs, and v different topics (smart homes, spreadsheets, software errors). More soon!
When distributed systems students encounter the word “causal”, they often mispronounce it as “casual”. Here’s a way to remember the difference:
A blind first date is casual.
A second date is causal.
Alright, I've had it with all the negative news. Starting today, I'll be posting a distributed systems joke a day. Here's today's food for thought:
Distributed Systems researchers are both cynical and very talented. Some might say we have a NACK for everything.
@Miandre
As an Indian I can say that taste wise, chai tea is quite different from chai (Indian households), and is also different from tea (another western thing). Naan bread = Indian Naan tho (modulo small changes due to Americanization).
In a stunning development, distributed systems researchers today solved a long standing conjecture by publishing an O(1) solution to consensus in the appropriately-asynchronous model! This completely changes how future blockchains and web services will be organized! Exciting!
Congrats Dr. Le Xu
@happyandslow
- the newest doctorate from my research group! (& 12th overall PhD, & 3rd woman PhD, from my group). Really special as Le started her undergrad research w/ me!
Next: Post doc w/ Aditya Akella
@adityaakella
at Texas, w/ CIFellows (CRA) Fellowship.
Congrats to Dr. Rui Yang on defending her PhD today! She did amazing work combining systems and HCI studies. Dr. Rui Yang is headed next to Google.
(PhD Student
#13
for me. I consider 13 a lucky number.)
"Rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated". The Fall course I teach, "
#DistributedSystems
" at
@IllinoisCS
, used to have ~35 students in mid-2000s. In Fall 2023 this class has... 600 enrolled students (and it's only a 400-level course!).
First time in my career (20years) that ALL of my PhD students are around this summer, plus a record number of undergrads + high school + iCAN students I’m mentoring over summer. (Tech company internships were very hard to get this year!)
First time in my career (23 years since I came to Brown) that I have NO research ugrads or PhD students for the summer: latter are all interning, didn't hire an of the former. 100 days mostly to myself to do something worthwhile. Scary! (-:
Transmitting, Fast and Slow. Did u know--when LEO satellites send data to ground stations, *not* greedily sending data is...faster?! AKA "Skip this crowded bus, wait for next bus!"
In Mobicom'23 next week!
W/
@billtao8
@maleehamasood99
@deepakv91
Paper:
The latest book I’m reading has a pencil on its cover that is similar to the pencil I’m using to mark it. Without looking up Google or images can you guess which of the 2 pencils below is the real pencil?
Grad Students often ask me, “How should I review papers?” And “How do you reject papers?” Well - There’s a tutorial for that! A musical tutorial.
#AcademicTwitter
#AcademicChatter
Such a dynamic pic with
@tianyin_xu
@deepakv91
Robin Kravets. From last year's Spring Systems-and-Networking area
@IllinoisCS
Retreat at Allerton.
I have become a grizzly old Prof who explains supposedly-deep philosophies via...jokes.
Pretty special experience for me to be on the same PC (Conference Program Committee) as my own PhD advisor Ken Birman
@KenBirman
(Cornell) and my own PhD advisee Shadi Noghabi
@snoghabi
(PhD UIUC Alumna 2018, now at MSR Redmond)!
#OSDI2022
- My first year grad student from
#India
: I watch a lot of Indian movies.
- Me: My favorite director is Subhash Ghai.
- My student: Who’s Subhash Ghai?
Folks, I’m
#OfficiallyOld
@tianyin_xu
Please train your students to respond to such requests, with a question, e.g., "Prof, What is difference between fail-slow & fail-stop?"
If person can't answer, they're not you. If they do answer, they're still not you bcos you'd never give away an answer to an exam question.
Tuberculosis felled him as a child for 2 years. Raised by Mom. Grew up under Pinochet dictatorship in
#Chile
. Then he founded companies, wrote a textbook, became a Professor. Featuring: Ricardo Baeza-Yates
@PolarBearby
on
@csimmigrant
Episode 35! Listen:
Today my research group had another truly major breakthrough. We finally managed to compress our paper to fit page limits.
Please clap.
#AcademicChatter
Actor-based stream processing! New NSDI 2021 paper by PhD student Le Xu
@happyandslow
A collaboration with Microsoft
@RahulPotharaju
. Presentation next Tuesday at NSDI!
Cameo Paper Preprint:
Usenix NSDI page:
Me in 1998 when I came from India to US: "Wow, US customer service is so much better than anything in India! Things are slow in India!"
My (Indian) student who came to the US in 2022: "Wow, US customer service is so much worse than anything in India! Things are slow in US!"
Proud advisor moment! We often celebrate our PhD students but our Masters students at
@IllinoisCS
also accomplish amazing things after graduation! Son Nguyen did his Masters thesis research with me, and then founded Vietnam’s first indigenous electric bike company!
Son Nguyen (BS, MS CS' 14) is creating the future. 🏍️⚡️
With his innovative startup DatBike, Nguyen aims to transform Vietnam's preferred transportation choice with the first and only 'made in Vietnam' electric motorbike company.
▶
Happy faces after “Board/Card Games Afternoon” with my PhD students @ my house last Sunday.
With Anna Karanika, Chirag Shetty, Maleeha Masood, Ali Zaidi. (Missing Xiaojuan Ma, Beomyeol Jeon).
@anna_karanika
@maleehamasood99
Hurray! Now among top 20% of all podcasts in the world! (listener numbers) So humbled that my amazing and renowned guests opened up their hearts w/ their oral histories on Immigrant Computer Scientists Podcast. More episodes soon!
@csimmigrant
#csimmigrant
Why do Map and Reduce make terrible roommates? Because they are always fighting... Reduce is always stealing Map’s keys, and Map is always shuffling Reduce’s keys.
@hima_lakkaraju
This chair deserves a response like, “I am well aware that the situation in the conference review system is tragic. I know about the mass rejections, the high number of papers, and overwhelmed chairs. But unlike you some people are doing their duties to humanity and decency.”
@indygupta
organized Speed Dating where each student pitched their research to the faculty and other students at the table. We switched students to different tables every 15min and clearly students improved their pitches along the way. It's a super high volume of information!
Traveling to India or to US? Here are my experiences from Oct-Nov 2020 travel from US<->India. India has more entry requirements than the US (e.g., tests before, forms), flights to India require faceshields+masks, India cab/rideshare/big stores/hospitals are more Covid-careful.
@balaji_srini
@avataram
@reader_wanderer
The JEE change from descriptive to multiple choice flipped the education economy in the 2000s. Diminished famous coaching centers & elevated new institutions—Sri Chaitanya, Narayana academy, etc., as they were already successful in local EAMCET, which were always multiple choice.
Tough act to follow Stephen Wolfram's interview on this superb
@UIUCTalkshow
talk series! But I tried. In this interview, I discuss my
@csimmigrant
podcast, my Dad, Mom, music, value of college, and all things under the sun. Love that towards the end it became a 2-way interview!
Here's our conversation with
@indygupta
about Immigrants in Computer Science.
This is a unique conversation with a brilliant mind who has much to share about his experiences in the world of computer science, education, and the immigrant experience.
@CSProfKGD
Fun fact 1: the term “Byzantine” was first used in 1980 (Lamport Shostak Pease) and has been used consistently since then by dist sys community.
2: This reviewer likely has read none of those papers.
3: Some consider “robot” offensive—comes from Czech “robota” for “forced labor”.
She fell in love with a distributed systems researcher, and they would replicate each other's sentences, but over time they grew asynchronous, and so they elected an external leader to help them, but now they can’t even reach agreement, and eventually they're partitioned.
Congratulations to Le Xu
@happyandslow
for winning a 2021 CIFellows postdoctoral fellowship. She will be joining my research group this Fall at
@UTCompSci
.
Welcome, Le! Looking forward to our collaboration :-) Congrats also to Le's PhD adviser
@indygupta
!
Really excited about our Ubicomp 2023 paper! Rare to see a paper w/ Distributed Systems + HCI + Security researchers! Wayyy outside my comfort zone, and I loved every moment of it. This is such a fun group to work with!
Every family has conflicts... but did you know IoT devices can also conflict? How would you prefer that IoT devices resolve their conflicts? Our 2023
@ubicomp
paper finds that humans' values influence their preferences.
From
@IllinoisCS
Full Paper:
Folks, I finally did it! US
#PresidentsDaySale
is known for discounted mattress sales (for whatever reason). I've always wanted to partake in this uniquely American tradition & save some money!
So, this last weekend, I finally did it! I saved $3500! by not buying a new mattress.
Yesterday I hooded (L to R) Dr
@SheguftaAhsan
, Dr Le Xu
@happyandslow
, Dr Rui Yang. We 4 struck poses on stage & made folks laugh. + alumni reunion + current group (+1s) at my house (missing: 2 students on travel, 1 student’s wife and baby asleep, 1 student’s child at school.)
"2022: A Space Odyssey" is the the 3rd homework in my Distributed Systems class. The questions thread thru an epic sci-fi story, featuring Hal, Doraemon, Einstein, Interstellar, & a twist ending. I had a lot of fun writing this. Check it out!
The latest book I’m reading has a pencil on its cover that is similar to the pencil I’m using to mark it. Without looking up Google or images can you guess which of the 2 pencils below is the real pencil?
This summer I was fortunate to be on the Anti-Racism Task Force (ARTF) in College of Engineering at U of I. Here's our report, with 18 recommendations and detailed plans for each. Easily one of the most diverse+actively engaged committees I've been on!
Q: What’s the difference between a balloon and a
#distributedsystem
?
A: One blows around unpredictably, spies on you constantly, and can deflate or get shot down or fail any moment. The other is just a balloon.
#distributedsystemjokes
I asked my Distributed Systems class to go and vote. Students immediately started talking about Safety, Liveness, and the CAP theorem. Love these students!
Oh I have to apologize.
@Columbia
has the worst form for reference lewtters. Long drop down menus. I had to type in my email (which they already had since they sent the letter request there!), snail mail address, & a bunch of other useles nonsense info. Fix this next year, please
My first experience with
#ChatGPT
was both terrifyingly accurate and also depressingly reassuring that it has solved no real
#distributedsystems
problems.
He came to USA w/ little English. Then he became a Professor, leader of Software Engg community, IEEE Fellow. And he did it by... failing. And courageous leaps. Episode 2 of Immigrant Computer Scientists Podcast:
@csimmigrant
#csimmigrant
@ComputerSociety
1/N This Fall 2020, my Distributed Systems class students compiled a list of "racist or borderline-racist" terms that appear in open-source (distributed) systems today. Here's the unedited list, + links. There are surprises, esp immigrant-related words.
@vj_chidambaram
@UTCompSci
I recall many years ago we had a student couple at UIUC (both Phd students) with a baby, and they had devised a “JIT baby handoff” protocol in between classes/meetings. 😲 I wish parent-PhD students were able to share more tips amongst each other! (I have a few such students)