Author: Anne Stuart | Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science<\/p>\n
When she was an MIT undergraduate studying electrical engineering, Jeannette Wing \u201978, SM \u201979, PhD \u201983 took a required computer science class and began thinking about changing her major. But before making the decision, she called her father, a professor of electrical engineering at Columbia University, to ask one big question: Is computer science just a fad?<\/p>\n
\u201cI literally remember asking him that question,\u201d Wing said, drawing chuckles from an audience of MIT students and faculty. Wing\u2019s father assured her that computer science was here to stay. \u201cSo I switched,\u201d said Wing, who is herself now the Avanessians Director of the Data Science Institute\u00a0and\u00a0professor of computer science at Columbia. \u201cAnd I\u2019ve never looked back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Patti Maes\u2019 career path also began in college, when she couldn\u2019t decide between two majors. Because of an economic downturn at the time, she also worried about the employment prospects in both fields. \u201cI got interested in computer science as a way of [not] choosing between biology and architecture\u201d \u2014 and ensuring that she could find a job after graduation, she said. Later, as a visiting professor and research scientist at MIT, Maes began working with robots and artificial intelligence (AI), but eventually moved to the MIT Media Lab, where she is now a professor of media arts and sciences. She said she\u2019s more interesting in human intelligence, focusing on, for instance, how to help people improve their memories, become more creative, and listen better \u2014 \u201cthese soft skills that we really desperately need to do well in life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wing and Maes were among five academic and industry leaders who participated in \u201cPerspectives from Luminaries: A Panel on Computing and Cognition\u201d in Huntington Hall on Tuesday. The two were joined by MIT Institute Professor and computer scientist Barbara Liskov; Laura Schulz, MIT professor of cognitive science; and Jaime Teevan SM \u201901, PhD \u201907, chief scientist for Microsoft\u2019s Experiences and Devices product team. The panel was moderated by Stefanie Mueller, the X-Window Consortium Career Development Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), and Vivienne Sze, an associate professor in EECS.<\/p>\n
In introducing the panel, MIT Chancellor Cynthia Barnhart noted that the event capped the opening day of this week\u2019s campus-wide celebration of the new MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing. \u201cThe theme for today was \u2018explore,\u2019\u201d Barnhart said. \u201cTonight, we\u2019re here to listen to and learn from true luminaries.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Liskov noted that the event organizers had asked panelists to send a photo of themselves with their first computers. \u201cWhen I was growing up, there were computers \u2014 some,\u201d she said, describing the room-sized machines of the time. However, computer science wasn\u2019t yet an academic discipline, and it didn\u2019t occur to her to study engineering because, in the late 1950s, that was \u201cnot something girls did.\u201d So she earned a bachelor\u2019s degree in mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley, then looked for a job. \u201cThat\u2019s when I discovered computers,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
At the time, companies needed programmers. But with no computer-science graduates yet available, Liskov said, employers would hire anyone with expertise that would let them quickly pick up programming skills. So despite knowing nothing about programming, Liskov landed a job at MITRE Corp. On her first day, someone handed her a FORTRAN manual and told her to write a program to solve a problem, and that began her long and distinguished career in computer science. “I was in the right place at right time,” she said, adding later: “I was lucky to get into computer science very early, when there were huge problems just waiting to be \u00a0worked on.”<\/p>\n
After a year, she left MITRE for a programming job at Harvard University, working on computer translation of human language, before returning to graduate school. When she received a PhD in computer science from Stanford University in 1968, she was one of the first women in the United States to earn a doctorate in the field. She returned to MITRE for a few years, then joined the MIT faculty in 1972. She was named an Institute Professor, MIT\u2019s highest faculty honor, in 2008. A year later, she received the Association for Computing Machinery\u2019s A.M. Turing Award, sometimes described as \u201cthe Nobel Prize of computing,\u201d in recognition of her contributions to programming language and system design.<\/p>\n
Liskov\u2019s definition for computing hasn\u2019t changed much since that first job at MITRE. \u201cOne thing that stuck with me all these years is [viewing] computing as a way of solving problems,\u201d Liskov said, drawing nods from many in the audience. \u201cThat\u2019s what\u2019s meant by computational thinking.\u201d But she added a warning: \u201cI hope that we as a society learn to tame the technology that we have with us now and make good choices about the technology that\u2019s coming.\u201d<\/p>\n
Teevan summed up her story this way: \u201cIt\u2019s about being the wrong place at the right time.\u201d After receiving a bachelor\u2019s degree in computer science from Yale University, Teevan worked for a couple of years as a software engineer, then headed to MIT for graduate study. At the time, she said, MIT didn\u2019t offer much in the way of information retrieval or human-computer interaction, so initially, she wondered whether she\u2019d made a mistake. Fortunately, she said, those research in those fields evolved rapidly during her time at the Institute (as did her family; she gave birth to her first three children while in graduate school and later had a fourth).<\/p>\n
Teevan has been with Microsoft since 2006, first with Microsoft Research, then as technical advisor to CEO Satya Nadella, and now as chief scientist for Microsoft\u2019s Experience and Devices product team. Her advice to the audience: Keep your entire career in perspective. \u201cTake the time not just to look forward, but to look back, to reflect on what you\u2019re doing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Schulz described her computing experience as comparatively brief. \u201cI got a TRS-80 when I was, I guess, 11,\u201d she said, referring to the early desktop microcomputer, and the last time she did any programming was shortly after that. Instead, she focused on human intelligence while studying for a bachelor\u2019s degree in philosophy at the University of Michigan. \u201cI was interested in how human learners engage with the world,\u201d she said. After receiving a master\u2019s degree and PhD in developmental psychology from the University of California at Berkeley, she joined the faculty of MIT\u2019s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Given her nontechnical background, she recalled, friends jokingly asked whether she knew what the \u201cT\u201d in \u201cMIT\u201d stands for. But she added that there\u2019s an obvious need to study both kinds of intelligence: \u201cIt\u2019s very clear that children learn in different ways than powerful machines are learning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some panelists offered the audience a peek at research in progress. Maes is exploring how ubiquitous smart devices might positively impact human mental health and psychology. She described how these devices \u2014 which already know a great deal about their users \u2014 could potentially \u201cintervene in the moment and maybe talk to us when we\u2019re about to engage in a behavior we want to change, or help calm us down when we\u2019re stressed out or anxious, or remind us to be attentive when we\u2019re sitting in a lecture.\u201d Wing, meanwhile, is trying to build a community around what she calls \u201ctrustworthy AI.\u201d She noted that researchers understand AI\u2019s exciting potential, \u201cbut we also recognize the danger of models that are unpredictable, or unexplainable, or not fair, in the sense of discrimination,\u201d she said. \u201cWe need to find ways for people and society to actually trust these systems.\u201d<\/p>\n
The panelists said that opportunities for women have improved in both academia and industry, but much work remains to be done. \u201cWe just have to keep on going, and pushing,\u201d Liskov said. \u201cOne thing that helps is women looking out for women.\u201d<\/p>\n
And, she said, women must also look out for themselves. \u201cSometimes a door will open and you have to decide whether to step through it or not,\u201d she said. \u201cYou have to come to grips with what you want, and not what somebody wants for you \u2014 something you\u2019re good at and that makes you happy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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