Kudos, ACM!

Kudos to ACM for featuring two prominent Female Computer Scientists on in this month's Communications of the ACM (CACM) -- Jeannette Wing and Barbara Liskov (via Valerie Barr). I especially enjoyed reading Valerie's article about Barbara's keynote at Grace Hopper. Barbara is the second woman to win the Turing Award, which is basically the Nobel Prize for Computer Science. I liked this:

"Liskov talked about her technical work that ultimately led to the Turing Award. Much of her work was motivated by an interest in program methodology and the questions of how programs should be designed and how programs should be structured. So, after receiving the Turing Award, she went back and reread the old literature, discovering anew that there is great material in old papers and that her students were unaware of it. So, she is now pointing people to these papers and encouraging people to read them. 

For example, three key papers she cited are:

• Edsger Dijkstra, "Go To Considered Harmful," Communications of the ACM, Vol. 11, No. 3, March 1968, pp. 147–148.
• Niklaus Wirth, "Program Development by Stepwise Refinement," Communications of the ACM, Vol. 14, No. 4, April 1971, pp. 221–227.
• David Parnas, "Information Distribution Aspects of Design Methodology," IFIP Congress, 1971."

I recently had a similar "everything new is old again" epiphany. I was looking up a paper that everyone cited and realized it was far too recent. So I went down the citation rabbit hole and found the original paper, written over 30 years ago. And, wow, great ideas - but they completely got lost in the whisper-citation-down-the-lane effect.

Anyway, good stuff, check it out if you have the chance.

Postage linkage

I'm unfortunately too busy to post something oh-ridge-a-nal today, so instead I will highlight three posts from fellow Computer Scientist bloggers that I really enjoyed.

1) The Five Stages of Conference Paper Writing, by Amy Dalal over at This is What a Computer Scientist Looks Like.

I laughed my head off at this post. It's so true, every word of it.

2) Programming != Computer Science by Matt Welsh over at Volatile and Decentralized.

This is really apt as well. There's such a big difference between how you envision projects in industry vs. in academia. This is one reason why it's really nice for students (both undergrad and grad) to do summer internships in industry. It really helps bring perspective and changes how you think about software development.

3) Hello Android by John Reghr over at Embedded in Academia.

I just want to say that giving an A to any student who legitimately makes $100 on a mobile app developed for class is a brilliant idea. If I ever teach a class that involves mobile app development, I'll have to steal that one!

9/11's (and Google's) effect on technology

Marketplace had a great piece today on Alessandro Acquisti's work on his Face Matching Algorithms of Dooooom. As in, he takes a photo of the NPR interviewer with his iPhone, and it immediately pulls up everything about the guy.

From a technological perspective it's all fascinating, but from a privacy perspective it's downright terrifying. This is all reflects a lack of citizen and governmental understanding of data. You share some information with your grocery store, get a frequent shopper card, you don't realize how this data is being brokered, merged, sold, to countless numbers of people. Furthermore, a photo you post with some friends at a party, even if you don't tag it-- all you need is one identifiable photo (Driver's license registry?), and BOOM, there it is.

Add this to fraudulent SSL certificates running amok, and I really feel like we're up a creek.

This is a great time to become a security researcher. Grad students, forget all those other CS topics - do security. Or systems. Or both! There are plenty of important problems that need solving ASAP.

My view on "safe" research

What's that old proverb that everyone used to forward around in the 90s?

Work like you don't need the money; dance like no one is watching; sing like no one is listening; love like you've never been hurt; and live life every day as if it were your last.

I basically view my research program this way now. I met with a senior colleague recently who started to dispense the "play it safe until you're tenured" advice, then stopped themselves midstream and said, "Actually, if you play it safe you probably won't get tenure."

I think the game is all about finding exciting problems to work on and having the motivation to work on them (and getting students excited about working on them). It's also about aligning yourself to what people want to fund. We certainly seem to be in an era of applied research being popular - which is great for most computer scientists, though I do feel bad for my colleagues in theoretical fields.

Still, I think it's possible to be well-aligned with the desires of funding agencies and administrators while also pursuing dangerous ideas. It's all about spin.

All in a day's work

Today I received my first "Yo Professor!" email of the semester*, had a student sitting in my office providing an unsolicited out-of-the-blue trashing of some colleagues, and, during the meeting, had a student who I've never seen before just walk in to my office asking to borrow a stapler.**

Last week another female STEM professor and I were walking down the street and a car of young men drove past and started honking and shouting. And another almost-student posted very bizarre ethnic and racial slurs online.

I think we need R. Lee Ermey to give the opening speech at orientation, whoever is doing it now is clearly too much of a softie.

Apparently it's not just me having fun encounters with students this week! Must be all the crazy weather.

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(*) Actually, at least he called me Professor instead of Mrs., or, worse, Mr. (That gender confusion happened last week, actually. "I'd really like to talk to Dr. FCS about his research program.")

(**) Ok, so it's Labor Day, so maybe the main office was closed. But it seems to me he could have knocked. And left when he saw another student was in my office. And, apologized and/or left when I growled and scowled. @Piggie(Oh, Ermeyyyyyyyyyy).

Professor Doctor FCS, Ph.D.*

Yikes, I haven't posted here in ages. Nor have I read anyone else's blogs. (Sorry!)

I alluded to having news in previous blog entries, so here it is - I finished my PhD and landed an academic job. All of this was relatively drama-free, however it has made life incredibly busy**.

I have no idea how people pre-tenure manage to write blogs, read blogs, get grant $, teach, advise, and publish a metric ton of stuff. These days I'm barely able to manage dinner. Or a dentist. And I think my kid has forgotten my name.

But I'll give it a shot. I think we still have a long way to go into the academy where scientific women at the PhD level are not seen as strange and unusual specimens. I've already had a few female students make very positive comments to me about being a role model, and I get a kick out of helping people, so there it is.

So I'll keep this blog going a bit longer and see where it goes.

Thanks for reading, and more soon.

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(*) This is tongue-in-cheek. All newbies always have something to prove, and tack on the titles to the point of hilarity.

(**) Like really, really busy. You know how as a graduate student you're always thinking, "Why does my professor write such terse emails? Why do they take so long to respond? Do they hate my guts?" No. We don't hate your guts, we just have 400 emails just like yours.

Persistence vs. Publish Pressure (PPP)*

An anonymous commenter on a previous post asks, "How do you balance persistence and pressure to publish?".

The big question I have is - who is pressuring you to publish?

If it is yourself, then the way I view all publications/research is: 1) What is the big idea I want to do, and 2) How do I best tell the world about it?

Sometimes, if it's a big idea with lots of pieces, you publish as you go. This is another reason why it's good to diversify your publication venue. So, when you're just sketching ideas out, workshop. Maybe you have some preliminary results, low-tier conference. Maybe your research is rocking the house, top-tier conference / journal.

Some people say, "Bah, least publishable units, growl." But it's not about that necessarily. It's about telling a story, building on previous work, figuring out where you're going. Instead of waiting three years and squashing everything into one paper, you keep the ball rolling.

Sometimes you Don't Publish. And that's ok too. For example, in the middle of my PhD I spent about 6 months doing exactly nothing. Nada. I realized I was spinning to far out into the wrong direction. It was time to retool and rethink my plans.

Now, if someone else is pressuring you to publish, that's a whole other ball of wax. I think in that case it's a question of what relationship they have to you (dean, chair, advisor, colleague, student), and whether their request for you to publish makes sense. Are they pressuring you because they think your work is amazing and ready for the world to see? Are they pressuring you because they think you publishing now will help your career later? Is it to help their career? It helps to explore motives here.

If you need time to persist on a research thread, drop the self pressure to publish and find your center. If you have someone breathing down your neck to publish tell them to lay off for awhile while you get your groove back. The last thing you want to do is publish junk science just because you're being pressured to publish for the sake of publishing.

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* For the geeks out there. (See also: this shirt.)