The HLF Portraits: Shwetak N. Patel
This is a modal window.
Das Video konnte nicht geladen werden, da entweder ein Server- oder Netzwerkfehler auftrat oder das Format nicht unterstützt wird.
Formale Metadaten
| Titel |
| |
| Serientitel | ||
| Anzahl der Teile | 66 | |
| Autor | ||
| Lizenz | Keine Open-Access-Lizenz: Es gilt deutsches Urheberrecht. Der Film darf zum eigenen Gebrauch kostenfrei genutzt, aber nicht im Internet bereitgestellt oder an Außenstehende weitergegeben werden. | |
| Identifikatoren | 10.5446/44107 (DOI) | |
| Herausgeber | ||
| Erscheinungsjahr | ||
| Sprache |
Inhaltliche Metadaten
| Fachgebiet | ||
| Genre | ||
| Abstract |
|
The HLF Portraits52 / 66
2
9
14
16
17
18
20
23
25
26
27
29
30
34
35
36
38
40
43
46
50
53
57
58
00:00
Formation <Mathematik>ComputerspielInformatikMathematikHalbleiterspeicherFrequenzWellenpaketGesetz <Physik>BitMereologieResultanteTermVirtuelle MaschineGrundsätze ordnungsmäßiger DatenverarbeitungFamilie <Mathematik>Faktor <Algebra>Prozess <Informatik>DruckverlaufVererbungshierarchieKontrollstrukturGradientBaumechanikHilfesystemQuellcodePlastikkarteNeuroinformatikMultiplikationsoperatorMinkowski-MetrikRechter WinkelOffice-PaketEinsFormale GrammatikBesprechung/Interview
09:38
DigitaltechnikFormale SpracheInformatikMathematikSchaltnetzSoftwareSpieltheorieTelekommunikationProgrammierungProgrammbibliothekKategorie <Mathematik>DialektBereichsschätzungBitForcingMereologiePhysikalisches SystemSystemaufrufGüte der AnpassungFamilie <Mathematik>InternetworkingWurzel <Mathematik>RobotikRoutingVererbungshierarchieKlasse <Mathematik>Gradientt-TestSchnelltasteSpielkonsoleDifferenteNeuroinformatikMultiplikationsoperatorSchlussregelCodecRechter WinkelEntscheidungsmodellSoftwaretestProgrammiergerätProjektive EbeneZustandsdichteRegulärer GraphNummernsystemPunktFigurierte ZahlEinsBesprechung/Interview
18:57
CodeComputerspielFormale SpracheHardwareInformatikInformationSchaltnetzSoftwareDeskriptive StatistikProgrammierungFrequenzBus <Informatik>MAPKategorie <Mathematik>SoftwaretestProgrammiergerätProgrammierumgebungHecke-OperatorBereichsschätzungAggregatzustandBitEindeutigkeitFakultät <Mathematik>Fundamentalsatz der AlgebraGrundraumPhysikalisches SystemRotationsflächeStatistische HypotheseZahlenbereichFlächeninhaltTheoretische InformatikGüte der AnpassungFamilie <Mathematik>Automatische HandlungsplanungVerzweigendes ProgrammInternetworkingDatenfeldLuenberger-BeobachterPunktVererbungshierarchieKlasse <Mathematik>GradientWort <Informatik>Lesen <Datenverarbeitung>Richtungt-TestSoundverarbeitungSchreib-Lese-KopfNeuroinformatikSystemplattformElektronischer ProgrammführerMultiplikationsoperatorFreewareMinkowski-MetrikRechter WinkelOffice-PaketEinsResolventeUbiquitous ComputingMobiles InternetBesprechung/Interview
28:16
HardwareInformatikMathematikRückkopplungSoftwareDeskriptive StatistikProgrammierungExpertensystemTypentheorieGebäude <Mathematik>MAPImpulsProgrammierumgebungKonfiguration <Informatik>BitFakultät <Mathematik>HyperbelverfahrenMereologieMetrisches SystemProjektive EbeneStatistische HypotheseTabelleZellularer AutomatFlächeninhaltFamilie <Mathematik>PrototypingAutomatische HandlungsplanungProzess <Informatik>Strategisches SpielDatenfeldRoutingRandomisierungPunktKlasse <Mathematik>GradientVarietät <Mathematik>Lesen <Datenverarbeitung>RichtungUmwandlungsenthalpiet-TestRahmenproblemAdressraumSichtenkonzeptDifferenteNeuroinformatikAlgorithmische LerntheorieElement <Gruppentheorie>DickeMultiplikationsoperatorFreewareRechter WinkelOffice-PaketOrtsoperatorYouTubeApp <Programm>AlgorithmusTotal <Mathematik>EindeutigkeitMechanismus-Design-TheorieBesprechung/Interview
37:35
ComputerspielDatenstrukturDiagrammInformatikWellenpaketKategorie <Mathematik>BenutzeroberflächeBitFakultät <Mathematik>GrundraumMereologieRechenschieberSpeicherabzugTermWärmeübergangGrundsätze ordnungsmäßiger DatenverarbeitungFlächeninhaltCASE <Informatik>Prozess <Informatik>Dean-ZahlDatenfeldPunktWort <Informatik>Richtungt-TestOpen SourceNeuroinformatikElement <Gruppentheorie>KurvenanpassungMultiplikationsoperatorBrennen <Datenverarbeitung>Rechter WinkelOffice-PaketHardwareRückkopplungMAPArithmetisches MittelGruppenoperationPhysikalische TheoriePhysikalisches SystemEnergiedichteComputersicherheitNotepad-ComputerWiederkehrender ZustandSchreib-Lese-KopfSchlüsselverwaltungDifferenteElektronischer ProgrammführerDienst <Informatik>Besprechung/Interview
45:41
MehrrechnersystemRelativitätstheorieSelbst organisierendes SystemProdukt <Mathematik>AggregatzustandGrundraumGruppenoperationLeistung <Physik>MereologieProjektive EbeneVirtuelle MaschineZellularer AutomatZentrische StreckungFlächeninhaltPrototypingAutomatische HandlungsplanungDatenfeldPunktRouterHilfesystemRichtungt-TestPlastikkarteFlash-SpeicherSchreib-Lese-KopfDrahtloses lokales NetzNeuroinformatikFitnessfunktionElektronischer ProgrammführerNetz <Graphische Darstellung>Einfache GenauigkeitMultiplikationsoperatorMinkowski-MetrikRechter WinkelApp <Programm>VakuumGesetz <Physik>ZentralisatorEnergiedichteFormation <Mathematik>VererbungshierarchieWort <Informatik>Hidden-Markov-ModellFokalpunktBesprechung/Interview
53:46
Elektronisches ForumBitrateComputeranimation
Transkript: Englisch(automatisch erzeugt)
00:18
Okay, I can't resist saying that I saw in one of the articles about you, you were called
00:24
a virtuoso. So what I want to do is start way before you were a virtuoso, okay? I want to start back in Alabama. Tell me about your family. Tell me a little bit about parents, where you were growing up, and then we'll build
00:41
to the virtuoso. Yeah. No, I grew up in Alabama, which is, so whenever he played this icebreaker with people where it's like, you know, I say two things that are true, one's false, and guess the false one, I always say, oh, I grew up in Alabama, and that's the one that everybody, it always gets everybody, because it's, no, there's no way, you don't have a southern accent,
01:03
you don't seem like a prototypical Alabamian, and so, but I grew up in Alabama, so my mom was born from India. Yeah, but where in India? In Gujarat, on the western part of India, that's where Mahatma Gandhi actually grew up.
01:22
Another virtuoso. Oh yes, exactly. And so he grew up, so that's where my parents immigrated to the US, they were actually professionals on mechanical engineering and microbiology, so I had a mechanical, my mom a micro, but they couldn't practice, in the 70s you couldn't practice, you came to the US, you kind of had to figure out what you wanted to do, because you couldn't do the
01:41
trade that you were kind of educated in. Because you didn't have the formal credentials that would be recognized. Exactly, formal credentials, you didn't know really how to get the in, like how you get a job in that space, and so they came, they actually worked in a carpet factory, they actually had very little, but they finally settled in Alabama, because one of the things at the time was the motel business, the motel industry was the thing that
02:03
Indians were starting to kind of take over, and so they bought a little motel in Clanton, Alabama, which is actually near Selma, which was a high part of the civil rights movement, so I was actually born in a hospital in Selma, and so when I was about two years old, we moved to Birmingham, Alabama, and that's where I grew up, so that's when they bought
02:24
a little bit bigger motel, and I grew up, like I'm a computer scientist, but I actually grew up on a motel, like just doing hotel stuff, so like we never had a normal house, like our house was the apartment that was connected behind the lobby of the motel, so my chores were, you have to vacuum 50 rooms, you have to make the beds of 50 rooms,
02:45
so I think, I did the math one day, I think in my life I've done 10,000 beds or something like that, and so my friends would complain about, oh yeah, I gotta take out the trash, I gotta do my chores, like chores, I helped clean with my brother and sister all these rooms, that's my chore, right, and so that's where I grew up, and to me it was like,
03:03
this is normal, you know, you have the business in front of you right here, and here's our little apartment, but yeah, we lived at the business, and so I could see how hard my parents would work, I saw the hardship, and Indian families, they do everything for the kids, everything we're doing, they're not gonna buy, they don't buy anything for them,
03:22
we got the fancy shoes and the shirts because it's all for the kids, right? Would they, can I say, were they accepting of their situation because of the kids, were they disappointed, I mean, these were professionals? No, there's no disappointment, they were just looking, the reason why they moved to the US is for an opportunity, right, their parents were like, hey, go to the US, this is gonna
03:43
be the opportunity for you and their grandkids, right, so my dad's a pretty big family, one of nine, my mom's one of five, they all slow, like one would come, get a green card, and the next one comes, so it's kind of, they sponsored each one, now they're all in the US, I have over 50 cousins, the whole family, yeah, they're all over the
04:00
US, all over the US, I always joke about anywhere I go in the US, I have a couch, right, because it's all over the place in the US, but my dad's one that's kind of in the middle, my mom was on the older, yeah. So I'm projecting that may not be right, because I don't have the same kind of personal history, but are there books in their lives,
04:21
I mean, they can't practice anymore, is their technology interesting them, is there anything from their, no, it's the chosen life, it's the drive, yeah, exactly, and I mean, they have fascinating stories about how they even found, like at that time, you couldn't just Google for, oh, businesses we can buy,
04:41
it's just, whoever came first had enough experience, like, hey, this motel thing, I can learn, and so we already passed it down, so somebody else from India would come, they'd work with the motel for us, help train them up, then help them buy theirs, and just pass it along, and they had no clue how to run a business like that, but on the job training, it's just literally the American dream,
05:03
it's literally living the American dream, they came in, they look for an opportunity, and they just make money. How many kids in the family? Just you and your sister? Yeah, so I have a younger brother and younger sister, so I'm the oldest. You're the oldest? Yep. Okay, so it may be a legend, or it may be dead accurate, if they're doing all this for you,
05:21
how much pressure are you getting in terms of schooling? How much are they expecting, at least from you, a certain kind of result in terms of- Yeah, they were really hands-off. I mean, you have Indian families that are very much about schooling, here's what you're going to do, you're going to help with the family business and do well. They want us to do well, but I never thought we were pressured.
05:41
Oh, interesting. They were like, we're going to support you, we're going to make it easy for you to go through the schooling, like, you know, none of us, all of us were debt free, my sister went to med school without any debt, I went to grad school, I got a PhD in computer science, my brother got a PhD in chemical engineering, he's a professor in Chicago, I'm a professor at the University of Washington, my sister's an OBGYN. So we all became doctors in some way, PhDs are doctors.
06:03
And what else could they hope for, right? But they made it easy, they made sure that we did not have hardship in terms of getting there, right? So debt, and they saved up to make sure that was going to happen. But we also learned hard work, because through the motel, the motel, the thing that is what made me a hard worker, not because of school,
06:21
or so this innate thing that, oh, I got to get the best grade in the world. It's like, this is the thing that translated to me being a hard worker, which was kind of fascinating. That's reflecting back, like at the time, I didn't realize this is the thing that was happening. But that was the thing that really... So are there books somewhere in those motel rooms? Are there, I mean,
06:44
I'm looking for an intellectual source, but I may not be there. I have one for you. Okay. Yeah. So, but, yeah. So I would say we have, so, so in the motel, so there's a couple of things. So in the motel, I had to be hands-on. So I would help fix stuff, electrical breaks, right?
07:01
So I was hands-on too. I'd fix, like, I know, I mean, I know how to do weird stuff like fixing a vending machine or an ice maker, right? Like I know how to do stuff. And so he fast forward, like maybe 10, 20 years. Like my research is electrical and plumbing. That's because I could actually do that. But anyway, let's start from the beginning. But yeah, it's always very hands-on.
07:23
So I would build stuff. So in the motel, we'd have a giant laundry room thing where all the linen would be done and behind it, my parents would let me build a wood shop. So that's where I would do woodworking and I would just build stuff. I would always be building stuff. Like my parents gave me a hammer, I guess when I was like three or four, not a play hammer, but a wheel hammer. And I still have the scar on my finger to prove it.
07:42
And so, so they just let me be creative. And so that was one thing. I was just always tinkering. And I think it was because, yeah, I was always tinkering, but the technical intellectual thing was, it happened when it was fascinating. So so in the motel, so my parents kind of knew that technology was going to be a thing,
08:01
but they didn't really know how, like they were not technologists. They knew nothing about computer science or anything like that, but they knew that, you know, maybe he might be interested in technology. Maybe we've got to get him to at least do some technical stuff. And I was pretty young. I mean, what was it? Third grade, maybe fourth grade. And so even them coming to the realization that technology is a thing was already fascinating. I don't know how that happened.
08:20
They didn't have technical friends or anything like that. But so, so there was a person that was living in the motel who kind of was living there for an extended period for years. Like, I mean, he was probably in there living in the, in the motel in one of the rooms for a couple of years, just, just instead of buying an apartment or renting apartment, he just lived in the motel, but he was actually a computer guy. So he, he went to, he had an emergency. And so he had got,
08:44
he got sick and he went to the doctor's office that evening, but never came back. And it was, and then, so he actually passed away in the hospital. That's what we assumed. We actually never found out what actually happened to him, but he just told my dad, Hey, I'm not feeling well. I'm gonna go to the doctor and just let my dad know. Yeah. But never came back and we assumed he passed away. We're like,
09:03
we just kept the room there because, Oh, maybe their loved ones will come and kind of get them. Nobody ever came. Like I think for a week, two weeks, three weeks, months, I think my parents just kept the room intact. But then we're like, Oh, we gotta get the room clean. We gotta have to, we gotta rent this room now. Even his car was there. Like, but, but he left all the stuff there.
09:22
So, but he must've had a heart attack. We actually don't know what happened. But he had a computer. He had a computer he was always using in the room. And my dad always talked to him a little bit about, Oh, what's this computer thing? I want my kid into it. And so, and so, yeah, we did this stuff, you know, probably the law is that, you know, if nobody claims that you can just take it, we could like donate it or
09:41
whatever, but we kept the computer, kept the little car too, but I think basically just gave the car to somebody else. But that was my first computer. But it was kind of a bit advanced. I didn't quite, couldn't quite figure it out. So we had somebody that did the PBX systems in the motel. So the PBX systems are basically the switchboard. So I actually have a weird talent.
10:01
And I know how to program switchboards in motels. But anyway, yeah, that is very weird. Oh, but so that guy had a computer. He said, Hey, I'll take that off your hands. I'll give you this other one just easier for the kid to use. And so my dad didn't know any better and he made the exchange. How old is the kid at this point? I am third grade. So let's see, third or fourth grade was it?
10:21
So I'm probably like seven, eight, seven, eight, nine. Okay. Got it. Yeah. And then we'll make a trade. And later on, we realized it was a bad trade. He gave us a really crappy computer and he got a really nice one out of it. Yeah, but it didn't matter. It was a Texas instrument, TI-99A computer. It was a keyboard computer. We connect a TV to it.
10:42
I learned how to program. I wrote a racing game on it. I just taught myself how to code on this thing. Like that's literally what happened at third, fourth grade. Like I learned how to write programs by myself. So I had, there was a little manual that I used, but that was the thing. And then my parents were like, Oh, he did that. And then we got like an actual computer, like a more advanced computer and say a lot of you.
11:03
Right. And then that's me. Like I third, fourth grade when I do what I do. But I wasn't always in the computer. So if my parents had to predict what I do, they'd be like, oh, he'd be electrical engineer because I was also building a lot of these kinds of things, electronics. And so they take me to Radio Shack whenever I wanted to. Radio Shack was actually one of these and not just a cell phone company selling you cell
11:24
phones. And so, so, yeah. So some would say, oh, he's going to be electrical engineer. Some would say, my aunts and uncles, he's going to be a doctor. Some would say mechanical engineer, given all the tinkering I do, I built my cars and go-karts. I was into go-karts. I actually knew how to fix go-karts. And they were like, anybody you would ask, they would say something different.
11:44
And so that was fascinating. In fact, you could have gotten any of those roots. I could have. I mean, they were not out of the ballpark. Just they didn't know which route you were going to take. No, they just didn't know. But they weren't pushing me anymore. They're not, they're like, there weren't like any other, you know, there's some
12:00
families that you're going to be the doctor or the lawyer. Many families. They're like, do what makes you happy. Are you, are you, by the way, a kind of lonely kid? Are you doing this by yourself? Are you finding any other kids your age? So you're in Alabama. They don't know. I mean, in Alabama, what you do, I did what most Alabama kids do, like dirt bikes and go-karts.
12:21
My parents gave me a dirt bike. And that's a fascinating story that I'll talk to you about in a second, how I convinced my parents to give me a dirt bike. Most parents will not do such things. But yeah, so I did the Alabama thing, like, you know, yeah. But not a lot of kids did this. Like, I got internet really early and my parents had no clue, like, how to get internet. Like, I figured it out. I went to the phone book, made the phone calls.
12:41
Like, I figured it all out. Right. But yeah, no, I kind of did it myself. And my brother and sister were younger, but then they kind of got into helping a little bit. But I was older than them. I mean, so four years older than my brother and seven, eight years with my sister. So I was older than them. And you were inventing yourself. I was inventing myself. And little did I know, I was inventing the future.
13:01
Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah. OK, so how do I get you into school? When do I find a mentor for you? Yeah. So it was interesting. OK, yeah, no. So along the way, I mean, Alabama schools are not great. And so it was funny because in, I think, first and second grade, they put me in all these remedial classes because they thought I had a learning disability.
13:21
Part of it was, so my parents, so I live with my grandparents. And so in at home, we spoke Gujarati, which was a native dialect. And so that's why I'm bilingual, but illiterate. So I can't read it and write it, but I can speak it really well. And so but then I didn't learn English until school started. But I mean, that didn't set me behind.
13:41
There's a lot of research that shows that you can have bilingual kids. They're not going to have a language deficiency. But I think it was I was just so I just had a different way of thinking about the world. So they thought he didn't know how to do math. He doesn't know how to do that. So they put me in these remedial classes. But then, like, I actually end up in high school. I went to a gifted high school. So it was actually the other way around. Instead of remedial, it was, oh, you need to accelerate.
14:02
So, yeah, but but yeah, so it's kind of school is easy. It's kind of going through. But I think the education. So I literally just taught myself. I mean, I would say you got fourth grade. You got fifth grade, sixth grade, good teachers. I mean, starting to get some good, some great math teachers.
14:21
I'm starting to get some inspiration there. Sixth grade. I mean, I'm like full force computer. Like I knew everything about computers. Like, I mean, yeah, everything like that was also the time when like the school system was asking me to help figure out how to fix their computers, program their computers. Like, I mean, you got the sixth grader doing this. It's just I mean, OK, now you didn't invent all computer science.
14:40
So you must have gone to the library, picked up some books. I mean, what? Gosh, how do you? Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, it's a little bit of library. But at that time, there were not any there weren't good articles on this stuff. Right. So I had to piece it together. So, yes, libraries. I had the Internet, but was it fifth, fourth, fifth grade? So I could actually do some stuff there.
15:01
I think really it was a combination of that Internet and then also the manuals to these computers. Yeah. So I was but literally this is fascinating. But being at a console and just like kind of working through it to figure out what to do is how I actually learned it. You had a DOS prompt, MS-DOS prompt, and you see that little, you know, less than the greater than sign.
15:23
Right. You got the C, colon, backslash. That's where I started. Right. And I just started, you know, reading a little bit, getting to one place and then trying to I think I started to capture kind of what the essence of this is. And I think I I think I got I understood what it meant to like write programs and like
15:41
try to go in there and do something beyond what you would just do with a regular piece of software. So who's noticing this? So who's my parents? My parents are totally noticing. Your parents are noticing. They're giving you what you already are telling yourself you want. Yeah. And so I think at that point, they realize whatever you want will give them because they also have this interesting insight to like whenever they got me something, they would give me two of some things.
16:03
They're like, play with it, do whatever you want with this one thing. Here's the same thing. I'll get you two of it. I want you to break it open and learn how it works. Wow. Yeah. So they would do that for me sometimes, too. So it's like, let's get two of them. Just play with this one. That's the pristine, fun, play with thing. Here's the one. If it's not broken open, then I haven't done my thing. So how do we get you from remedial to advanced?
16:24
So I think that's when seventh, eighth, ninth grade comes. So that's when we had the we had a technology class of all things, a technology class. It was called Tech Ed, technology education. That one is quite fascinating. I think maybe two or three weeks in, I actually knew more than the teacher, which was fine because he was very inspirational. He was trying his best to create a technology education course in Alabama in seventh grade.
16:45
So you were too good to be true as a student. I would work with him to create curricula. And so that's when I'm like, oh, that's when I got exposed to a little bit more technology. He had some more gadgets and gizmos I didn't realize existed. So that's when I was like hitting my stride. That's when I really knew that the confidence started to build around this time.
17:04
And the reason for this was they had these technology education competitions. These were called Technology Student Association Randy's. So these were technology competitions. So you would actually enter these competitions and you could build a robot and they get judged.
17:20
You might take a test. So there's a bunch of different things you could enter. And then he wanted to really send some students there and never really tried it. But when he started working with me, he's like, let's try this TSA competition. So you basically get like maybe six months to build all these things. And I entered every category you could possibly can. So I think each student can do three categories. I think I did robotics, technology.
17:40
So you had to build a piece. You had to build a little robot. You had to build a really cool gadget, a circuit gadget. And then I forget what the third one was. But so I did my first year. I didn't really know what to expect and I flopped. I didn't actually do well at all. Like I got there, got disqualified because I didn't follow the rules. And I didn't follow the rules because we didn't have the manual. And so even the teacher was learning at that time.
18:01
I'm like, next year, I'm going to own it. And so we got the manuals. We did it the right way. And in fact, I'm like, only three? I can only enter three of these competitions. So I came up with a scheme, which was, hey, I can teach these other kids in the class to enter in some other ones. I'll just do the project for them, but they could just represent it. So I entered nine.
18:21
So I had two other kids that are like, hey, I'm going to do these other categories. You don't want to do anything. I'll just build it and teach you how to explain it. And so this is where the dirt bike comes in. So my parents were kind of weird in this. They love trophies and awards. I award a lot of awards because in school at the end, you know, the top grade in math and all that. So I get that for some reason they love trophies.
18:41
I don't know why, but I think probably it was just a combination in that you got something, right? You succeeded or exceeded something. And they had to make this weird bet with me, which is like, if you win four trophies at TSA, we'll get your dirt bike. They knew I couldn't attain it because I can only get three trophies, but I entered nine, right?
19:01
Came home with four trophies. I got a dirt bike, right? So your father was as good as his word. I mean, yeah, yeah. Like he knew that I can only get three because you can only three. But little did he know that I trained up six other students to enter the other categories. But yeah, I mean, I just blew. I mean, so my wife always kind of jokes about it.
19:20
I got these trophies in our office at home. She's like, why do you have your high school trophies? He's like, those are my shows, your high school trophies. I'm like, but those are the ones that like, that's why that's the thing that gave me the confidence. I mean, so I still have those trophies in my house before we move on from him. I think we need the guide's name, the technology teacher who sent you in this
19:43
direction. Yeah. Yeah. Mr. Stallworth. Mr. Stallworth. Okay. Well, yeah, he's been acknowledged. Okay. So now we got to get you out of high school. All right. And someplace on junior high. This is junior high, just junior high by the way. We're in junior high. I'm in junior high. Okay. And this is not the special.
20:00
No, there's not special. It's not special. Yeah. And then my parents didn't know really how to navigate the school systems. They didn't. So I actually did the investigation myself. I'm like, I need to, I just want to, I like maxing out here now. So I actually found out in the state of Alabama and we went to Jefferson County, there was a high school called Jefferson County International Baccalaureate School. It's a public high school.
20:20
That's a feeder school for all the other junior highs. And basically you have to be gifted. You've got to take a test, be gifted a certain level, and then you get to go. And then the county did a cool thing where they bust all the kids there too. So if you couldn't drive there, if the kid or if your parents can take you there, they get you there. And that was, I lived on the other side of town. So my bus ride was like an hour.
20:41
But anyway, they didn't have, so I found out, I knew you had to get the testing. And I told my parents, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to get this testing and this testing, get this done. And I got in. And they're like, okay. And they were ecstatic. They're like, oh, that's a cool experience. So this was a great school. So it was a little bit of an oxymoron having the best school in the U.S. in Alabama. But routinely, the school was ranked number one in the country as public high
21:03
school because we would take the best of the best in there. So being valedictorian of the best high school in the country is kind of cool. But yeah, but the best public school, not private school. But yeah, I mean, they offered almost all the AP classes. They had the International Baccalaureate program.
21:22
So these are, now you talk about like, these are my friends that are like now can speak my language. And so there are a lot of folks that are into technology, that were into art and literature. And the facilities were everything you need. Everything I needed. And there we had Mr. Hollis, who's my computer science teacher.
21:41
And so he pushed me really hard. I did a lot more technology innovation things at the high school level. I did really well in school, you know, valedictorian, all that kind of stuff. And but yeah, that really pushed me hard. And that was a hard school. I did really well. And so, yeah, that was kind of like I got lucky and got put in an environment that let me flourish. Right. Very lucky.
22:01
Yeah. Very lucky. But you also had the talent to make it work. Exactly. So it was a combination of that. So I'm in high school and I graduate, go to Georgia Tech for undergrad. OK, so now you're going to let me ask you, why Georgia Tech? Why? How did you plan the next step? Yeah. So because you're a planner.
22:21
Yeah, I'm a planner. I kind of had a battle plan. So in high school, I did research. So I went to the local university to do research. And that was dictated by my high school. In high school, every Wednesday, you didn't go take classes. You actually went to go do research at a lab or university. Talk about progressive, right? And so that's when I started doing research. I did research with some computer science faculty at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
22:41
So at that point, I already kind of knew. I mean, this is the fascinating thing. People are like, how did you become what you are? I'm going to get a PhD in computer science and probably do research and I'm going to invent the future. I was already knowing. I knew my battle plan in high school, which is rare. And so I said, you know, what are the great schools? You got MIT, you got Georgia Tech, you know, the West Coast. I want to be close to home, but not being too far.
23:00
So Atlanta is about two and a half hour drive from Birmingham. So Georgia Tech is a great school, not too close to home, not too far. And you could still do the beds. And I did. Actually, at a certain point in high school, I no longer did the beds. They knew how rigorous my high school was. And so my brother and sister went to the same high school. So Georgia Tech, Georgia Tech hit the ground running there.
23:22
What because I know you as a kid now pretty well. OK. And so I'm thinking you're you know what Georgia Tech is going to be particularly strong in. Yeah. What was what was the strength of Georgia Tech at that point? Computer science, like computer science, engineering is the best engineering school in the country. Think about Georgia Institute of Technology.
23:42
Right. But yeah. Any particular branch of computer science or is it still young enough? That's why I'm young enough that I was still malleable in that space. OK. I was dabbling in everything in computing. In fact, I actually thought I was going to double major in computer science and electrical engineering, because I was still doing this stuff. Right. Right. And so I knew the hardware side and the software side pretty well.
24:04
I started doing research early because remember, I got research experience in high school. Right. And so I sought out research faculty to do research with like freshman year. So not only was I taking classes, I already started working with professors to do research. Hey, can I help out in research? And that's kind of where my career really like where I am now is because of my undergraduate research experience.
24:26
So so there's a faculty member, Gregory Abell, who actually ended up being my thesis advisor, too, eventually. Got me into this research area called if it was computing, I'm like, what the heck is that? But it sounds cool. And really, the lure actually was it was on Mondays at night, like seven o'clock, and there's free food.
24:43
That lured me. Yeah. But this ubiquitous computing thing sounded cool and like gadgets. And so we had this thing called the aware home. So Georgia Tech was inventing the home of the future. So they had funding from the state of Georgia to build this home and you can make it smart and do research in it. And so he gave me pretty much full reign of this. Go do what you want in this house. I built all these gadgets and gizmos.
25:02
Hey, remember, I could do electrical. So I would sneak in at night to like we do the electrical because it was union code stuff. And you couldn't get like I had to do it. Oh, how did that get fixed? Well, I don't know. But like that was my playground to do research. Yeah. And at the same time, I'm doing computer science class. So at this point, what are the years now we're in when you're at Georgia Tech?
25:23
Yeah. So this is like, you know, so I graduated high school in 2000, some 2000, 2001, 2002. And remember, yeah. The reason I ask is because I wonder if I can get it a kind of capsule description of the computer field at that point. What do we know? What don't we know?
25:40
Yeah, that's right. So at this point, you know, fundamental computer science is kind of being in it. It's still a nascent field, right? You still have, you know, theoretical computer science. You still have networking. Mobile is starting to become a thing. I mean, we didn't have these kinds of things quite there yet. But so it's really early. I mean, I'm at the sweet spot, right? Like you have computer science moving into mobile and I'm like right in the middle of this revolution.
26:05
And so and so this is what I'm already thinking about this. I was actually one of the first, actually I could say that, first computer science grad students at Georgia Tech to know how to program the mobile phone. This is when we had the flip phones, we had the Nokia phones, like I was like known as the phone programmer because I taught classes, you know, as a grad student.
26:24
So, yeah, I was early kind of in this mobile like sensor area. And because of the home, the home was the platform. It's like, oh, we're going to make a smart home that could take care of people inside of it, maybe for elderly, for for home health care, for sustainability. Like it was just like you said the magic word sensor.
26:41
Yeah. Describe that. What what's involved in that? So the sensor thing is like, you know, right now, if you think about information, it's like the thing that somebody curates, right? You know, you go to the Internet, somebody's curated something or wrote, written something. That's your information. But there's also more information in the world, which is the thing that could be observed. So if you build a sensor that can get a light reading or a temperature reading,
27:01
now you have another observation of the world that's digital that you can do something unique with. So now it's like, what can I detect in the environment that I could do something with? I could detect that somebody has fallen so I can do something there. I could detect that somebody is getting fatigued. So maybe I might want to intervene. So I started to get this, you know, like, you know, there's not enough data right there right now.
27:21
And so how do we build sensors to get more data about the world, either on the body or in the home? So that's when I started to dabble in the sensors. Now, where in the world is the best work being done at this point in sensor? Yeah, I mean, Georgia Tech luckily was an area. This was important there. People recognized it.
27:41
Yeah, but remember, I got into research early, and so I started publishing as an undergrad. So I actually, you know, got to conferences early. So I started to get exposed to researchers in this area worldwide. And so I knew the communities and kind of the different areas, so I started to get to know faculty.
28:01
But yeah, I happened to be in a place, and it just like, the thing I can't resolve in my head is if Gregory didn't pull me into the space or like encourage me to go into the space, if I went with another faculty member, would I have done this? I don't know. I actually don't know. Let's say I would have gravitated to networking. Would I become like a networking researcher?
28:22
It's a fair question. It's a fair question. You will never know the answer. I think I would, though. I think that eventually, maybe later on in grad school, I would have been... You would have been attracted to that. Because think of what I do. Like, look at my table. I have all this stuff. Like, I literally build all kinds of random stuff. So I needed to be in an environment, in a computing field, which is broad. Like, I had to be in an area where I could do the electrical engineering, the computer science stuff, the mechanical.
28:44
So this is a 3D-printed trachea for some of our health research projects. Life-size. It's not mine, but somebody else's. Emerited patient, 3D-printed trachea. Okay. Yeah, roughly life-size. So you were probably, fortunately, on the route you might have likely gotten to it. And then I think about, like, why did I go to that seminar is because when I read the description, oh, that's me.
29:05
So probably it was going to happen anyway. Now, do you need to do an undergraduate thesis, or is that not part of it? No, I did undergraduate research, but you could do a thesis option or class option. So I was only an undergrad for two and a half years. Because I had a ton of high school AP and IB credit.
29:21
Like I said, I had a battle plan. I was going to do research. I'm done with undergrad in two and a half years, and I'm already in the PhD program. So I applied, but I stayed at Georgia Tech because I didn't feel like I was there that long. So because if you're there during your full four years, it's like, okay, I would need a change. But it didn't feel like I was there that long. I had research momentum, so I stayed with my advisor to do my PhD at Georgia Tech.
29:41
And that was not fear of the unknown. That was just momentum. And then I looked at other places, and this was still the best place for me. Okay, so I get you to a thesis, certainly for PhD. How do you choose the thesis? What is the direction? This is the fascinating part. And this is how I teach my students.
30:02
So you do a little bit of research in your first year. You do your qualifying exam, and then you kind of know what your thesis is. I didn't know what my thesis was until my fourth year. And this is what I think Gregory did really well. Gregory's like, this guy's just all over the place. But let's not try to focus him. Let's let him do it all.
30:20
So I had probably, I mean, I published in so many different, I wouldn't say different areas, but different types of projects. I mean, I had the breadth of the types of stuff I did was just like, it's just, he did hardware and software. He could do machine learning. He could do health related stuff, sustainability, like, whoa. And I think Gregory realized that, you know, you don't want to rein him in. There's no reining.
30:41
This is how he operates. This is his research. He's able to bring together lots of different disciplines and do unique things in computing, right? It's like, he's not just narrowly focused on one learning computing. He's broadening computing. So you were lucky again. Yeah, he let me do this. And this, I mean, at the time, one would be criticized.
31:02
You're not a computer scientist. You don't have a focused area. You're never going to get a faculty position because you're not an expert in one thing, right? But for him, it was like, no, no, do your thing, right? And then I finally do have to do a thesis. And I had so many publications. I said, you know, this is my thing. It's the sensors area. So I did a thesis on sensors.
31:20
And it turned out this sensor, like, so basically using the signals that are already around us for sensing, which is kind of my mantra, ended up becoming a field that a lot of stuff got built up. I mean, I was fortunate to get the MacArthur Fellowship. That's because of my thesis work. Little did anybody know that this person that's all over the place
31:40
that didn't think was a computer scientist got a MacArthur award, right? But it was all in this area. And I think what Gregory did was, because he allowed me to dabble, he allowed me to stumble across an area that nobody else would have stumbled across if you took the particular path. And of course, that's one of the key elements of a free research environment, where it's not a specific goal.
32:04
It's letting the inquirer inquire. Yeah, exactly. You benefited from this. Totally. But you know what? I want to now talk about, as we build your career together, is the moral environment in which, and by a moral environment, I simply mean you're not just interested in the technology of things.
32:23
You're interested in goals that it might address. Yes. Oh, totally. When does that start? That was undergrad. That was undergrad when it's like, hey, you know, because I'm taking the classes too, right? And it's like, you know, I'm not really interested in making that process at one percent faster or that networking algorithm better, where a few million more packets are going through.
32:42
I'm hands-on. I want to see the direct impact of the work I'm doing, not the indirect, indirect impact. And the other thing is like, man, I have this powerful tool, which is computing, and how can I address society with this powerful tool? And remember, when I was talking, I could have been a doctor. And so that's when I started to think about, hey,
33:01
computer science could have a bigger impact than just me being a doctor, right? And I started to learn that in undergrad and grad school. And that's when I was like, no, no, no. Like the basic science research where you're just getting an incremental improvement on something that's already been published is not me. It's really moving, really moving the needle.
33:21
New sensing approaches, taking this whole field of computing, adding some more stuff to it, and having an impact on society, be it healthcare or sustainability is where I want it to be, so. Right. Yeah, yeah. The health framework, which has gotten more and more important in your work, was there health issues around you? Was it just an objective reading of what society needed?
33:42
Yeah, I get that a lot. Yeah, I was lucky in that we didn't have any major health issues in my family. Yeah, it was just, I mean, if you think about the societal problems, you've got sustainability and you've got healthcare. And it's just, it's around me enough that, yeah. But look, I've been fortunate that there wasn't a big healthcare trigger. It was just more, it comes to the realization
34:00
that healthcare is broken and we've got to fix it. Okay, so I'm beginning to get a sense of your intellectual ambitions for your field. What are your personal ambitions? How do you now get with a PhD to the next stage? Yeah, I had some wacky goals. Like, I mean, so my metrics for success were not necessarily publishing a bunch of papers,
34:20
which actually could be counterintuitive when you're trying to go for tenure, you got to get a bunch of papers. But I knew I could kind of do that. I knew I could do it actually. It's like, all right, that's fine. But I had some like weird goals. This was with grad school. It's like, can I do something where it impacts the lives of a million people? And I don't care what it is. I don't care. I don't care if it's a YouTube video that gets a million views. It's a paper that gets a million citations,
34:40
which actually be weird, but that's a lot of citations. If I build something that a million people use, my metric was a million people. At some point in my career, I want to get to a million. And actually, I probably actually hit that at this point, because I've done startups, technology, where we've hit a million people in some way. But now my goal is like 100 million. So I have a billion. So we'll talk about that later. But yeah, I just had this metric.
35:01
It's like, I don't know where million came in, but that was just my metric. If I'm not doing something that's going to get to my goal of impacting in some way, and when I say impacting, does it have to be a positive or negative impact in this cell? It's more than what I did has been, a million people have observed it and made them think about something differently. It's like, aha, or cool, or hmm.
35:20
That's what I want. This idea, this strategy registered with a million people. Yeah, either they used it tangibly, or they saw it, whatever. Okay, so you've got a PhD. How are you going to do that? Yeah, so I got a PhD. And then I'm thinking, what do I do with this PhD thing? What do you do with it? And so at this point, I'm like,
35:41
what do you do with my, so I'm a tinkerer, I'm an inventor of building stuff. I can write papers. And what feel, what career path even can absorb somebody like me? So this is when working with my advisor and just thinking through, being a professor can actually be my playground. So I looked at being a professor differently than a lot of other faculty at the time.
36:01
So I looked at being a professor as a playground to do all, like what I just mentioned, right? Whereas a lot of students came in saying, I want to be an academic. I want to teach. I want to do my scholarly work. I'll do that. That comes with the territory. And I like teaching and the scholarly work. But I came in with different, I'm like, I want to use this as a playground to have the computer science impact, right?
36:20
And so when I got, I actually interviewed okay. I had a lot of interviews and I got lucky and pretty much got offered all the places. But I presented myself as that, and present myself as being like the prototypical computer science faculty member. And it was really fascinating. So my wife, I met my wife at Georgia Tech,
36:40
who actually graduated the same lab, by the way, computer scientist. So we both got a faculty positions at a couple of different places and eventually we reached the University of Washington. Because you could both get positions? Well, we could get both positions at other places that we- So why here? It's great faculty, great place to live, to have a family eventually, the tech industry. The receptiveness of this department
37:02
on the wackiness that is of me. So there was no hiding this. You were wacky and you were the first to admit it. Yeah. And so you were looking for somebody who got, a department that got you? Yeah, but a lot of faculty, I think a lot of departments did understand it. There's something here, but we don't know what quite is. So that's why I had offers at other places too. Right. But it was interesting, even UW,
37:21
I remember getting some feedback, kind of like back channel feedback saying that, oh, he's too entrepreneurial. Because at the time I had already started a company as a grad student to commercialize some of the work. That was the feedback. He's too entrepreneurial. So this was a point in the transition, in the life of a computer person,
37:41
where entrepreneurialism was still a kind of dodgy element. Yeah, a little bit. And maybe not because it's not the scholarly thing to do. That was partly why. Right. You're a scholar. It's not the research scholarly thing. So it was kind of odd. So I got that feedback. So he's too entrepreneurial. And also, remember, I do a lot of things.
38:02
So is he going to be able to focus? Is he going to have a research agenda that students can graduate? There are always good reasons for being suspicious of an innovator. Yeah, exactly. Oh, OK. But that being said, we've got to roll back to the creation of your first company, which you said happened in graduate school. So you've done that already. Tell me about that.
38:21
Yeah. So this is kind of interesting. So I did a bunch of research in monitoring energy usage. And really, I was doing it for applying it towards elder care. Making it easy to deploy sensors to monitor activities of daily living and stuff like that. Not really necessarily on sustainability, but thought a little bit about it. I got a best paper award out of it. It was the first time this conference ever offered a best paper award,
38:42
and I was the first one to get it. So I got the inaugural award. So there's a lot of publicity that came out of that. And so a lot of these entrepreneurs reached out and they're like, oh, this could be an interesting use case. And I was thinking about the same use case. And so, yeah. So I'm like, OK, I want to try this. But how do you start a company?
39:00
I mean, what do you do? Yeah, so again, there were a lot of resources. But Georgia Tech had this kind of tech transfer office. And I started to work with them. And they started to help me go down this path. So I was lucky enough that Georgia Tech had enough of a tech transfer office to start to dabble. And just like how I learned how to program, learned how to become an entrepreneur. I never went to business school. Right, right. It's just on the job training.
39:20
Does the university in that case or did it share your profits? What was the profit structure? Yeah, I mean, those are always evolving. At the time, it's more of a, it's like a licensing revenue. So you can license the technology from the university into a company. And then there's revenue that kicks back and stuff. And so, yeah, it's the company. Even to this day, the university gets,
39:40
Georgia Tech at this time from that technology has licensing revenue coming back from that. So I know you, well, you do it again. But this one, you sell the company at some point. Is that before you even get out of graduate school? No, no, so this is one of the things that they were probably concerned about. They're like, well, he has a company and he's like a professor. So I sold the company in 2010.
40:01
So I was already a professor here in late 2008. So the University of Washington knew what they were getting. They knew that you had a company as well as interested in research. And I was working in an area that was at the time, it's like, he's very applied, which is kind of cool, but we don't know how to think about it.
40:21
So my department, so we had this thing. You have a slide deck for the department, right? And it's like, oh, here's who we are. And there's this picture. I still remember, it was like a flower, this picture. It's like, here's core computer science and here are the areas of computer science, networking, theory, and systems, right? It didn't have any of the applied stuff, like health and stuff.
40:40
But a year later or two years later, then you started to see like sustainability, healthcare. Then I knew that the department was internalizing this. And then you see all these other departments doing the same thing. So I call this the flower diagram, that now as the petals of the flower, now things like health and sustainability are now part of computer science, which when I started, wasn't even in the diagram.
41:00
Well, right. So I think they knew that this was gonna happen, but they didn't really know how it was gonna happen. But if we take on a professor that understands it, maybe they'll move us in that direction. Ahead of the curve. Now let's pause a second and talk about your wife. What is her work? Is she entrepreneurial too? How temperamentally as computer scientists
41:22
are you the same? Yeah, so she's a computer scientist. I wouldn't argue we're in the same field. I'm more on the technology, hardware, sensor side. She's more on the human side, in the sense that she looks at user interface technology. She looks at a lot of the formative work. So why would you build this if you built this? What is the impact? So she's at the University of Washington also,
41:43
Human Centered Design and Engineering, which is also an engineering field that takes in a lot of computing concepts. But you're an impact guy too. I mean, that's often why you're taking on tasks because you're interested in the impact. Impact, exactly. She is interested in the impact, and she's entrepreneurial in the sense that she wants to take her innovations
42:01
that have impact with it, but it's not the traditional approaches. I mean, she's trying the entrepreneurship stuff, but for her it's really more the scientific contributions that having impact. She'll do a non-for-profit or open source. She wants to broadly impact it I actually get a kick out of the entrepreneurship thing, so we can talk about it.
42:21
The whole under-constrained deadlines and constrained resources, that's actually kind of interesting and fun sometimes. So the fellow who has become scholar and entrepreneur has landed in the university that gets him. And tell me about, develop your career at the university.
42:41
Tell me what then happens. Yeah, I got the right signals. I knew that they were taking a risk on me, but our department chair and our dean actually sent the right signals. They would use the words like, hey, the work you do is a little bit different, but the way we define how faculty succeed or for tenure is not the normal way.
43:01
The normal is like the teaching, service, obviously research. But our dean and our chair at the time said, I have this fourth metric which is called impact, and you could define it. I'm like, ah, interesting. And at the time, impact was the other three. You had impact on research, impact on service, and impact on your teaching on students.
43:22
But fourth was a separate category. You did find impact. I'm like, interesting. And so yeah, that's why I knew they were the right signals. They could have called it the million person category. Exactly, but I could define it, right? So you progress rather quickly in terms of academic structure.
43:40
You come in at what level? I come in as an assistant professor. I got promoted to associate, which means you get tenure two years early. It's a little early. So almost all of my colleagues get to go up for tenure a year early at least,
44:01
because everybody's talented that comes in. Yeah, so a little bit almost two years early. But anyway, and then full professor just shortly after that. Let me make a couple years, if not. Well, this gives you security, God knows, to proceed intellectually and in an entrepreneurial way.
44:23
What are your next goals in terms of impact? Yeah, so the goals have really been around how do we, a couple things. One is the commercialization, the entrepreneurship, it's just a vehicle for me to get this stuff out there. We've got really good at writing papers.
44:42
I mean, like a lot of best papers and all this kind of stuff. And I'm like, God, the best paper's great. I got a lot of these back here. All those are best paper, of course, they're all. But it's great for the students. But that doesn't mean it's going to have the impact. It just means that somebody said, oh, that's a great paper. So I was always passionate to take what we have and push it forward.
45:00
And you can't just throw it over the fence. So sometimes you have to work in industry to help them push it along. You got to spin on a company. You got to do something to really nudge it past the kind of the journal. And so I was trying creative ways to how we do that. So Startups was one, working with industry,
45:20
going on part-time leave, still supporting the university and everything, go to industry, help them do something with my knowledge and what I've learned, move them in a new direction. So that's when I started to dabble in industry and universities and commercialization. And then the university is like, whoa, what is he doing? He's got like 20 hats on. It's all works. This is what you need to do to have impact. Was this articulated as a question to you?
45:43
No, not really. They knew I had a plan. Give me some disadvantages. No, let me put it another way. You might even, as the kind of person you are or seem to be, might even have made industry your total work
46:01
or were you always interested in the playground? No, playground. So like I said, I view the professorship as a playground to do my creative work, right? So I can, as a professor, I can pretty much, my research agenda is whatever I, and really at the end of the day, it's also the students, right? If I can get talented, creative, excited, kind students,
46:22
I gave the ACM Prize in Computing a reception talk and one of the things I said, the student I would always take over anything else is the kind student. The technical stuff I can teach, kindness is most important to me. The find the kind student. It's just like, it's the one that's not, the competitive one, it's not the one, it's like, kindness is the highest priority for me
46:42
because those are the students you can have a collegial relationship with, you can get them to think creatively, broadly. But anyway, so the right students can help nudge me in the right directions too. So I had a research agenda but really my path through my research career was my students helping and guide and empowering them.
47:02
But yeah, so, but I can steal my playground, right? So I can go to industry, do this thing and I can come back and do, because I do things in the increment of maybe two, three, four year things. I live three or four years, I get bored and do the next thing, right? So if I'm in industry, there's no way I could be in industry unless I have an incredible amount
47:21
of intellectual freedom, right? Because I'm going to do the next big thing. I'm not going to just work on this thing because at some point I can hand it off to society and they can push it forward. And so in academia, that playground is really important. So yeah, so the industry wouldn't have been a great fit for me right out of the get-go. But now, I mean, I have industry relations. I mean, I do a lot of things with industry, right?
47:41
Well, let's get to your second company. Okay. And what led to it and what was its focus? Yeah, yeah. So, you know, first company we sold which was all in the smart home space which actually had a pretty nice impact and that actually invented a whole field which was great. The next one was, you know, a low power sensor company. In fact, I still have the original prototype
48:00
that the student built. So this became this product which is a sensor in the home. And then, yeah, it was like, hey, let's get this out there. I worked with a colleague. So a sensor in the home. Yeah, low power wireless sensor that's so low power that you never have to replace the battery. This little coin cell battery will last 25 years. Unlike the microphone that just went out,
48:22
that battery, this sensor would last for about 25 years because it's so low power. The sensor that we built is so low power. So one of the things, as I've read about you and I think is apparent in what you're saying too, is the impact is going to be also a cost issue. Yeah. I mean, it's not that you're just coming up
48:41
with clever things, but you're coming up with things that are practical that people can actually use. Right, scale it, right? It's like scale. So the first company was around using the electrical system to monitor energy usage. So if I can listen to the power line and know what electrical appliances are on there, I don't have to put a sensor everywhere. So scale, easy, single sensor with machine learning to do that.
49:02
This one was, hey, let's use the power lines as an antenna. You already have all this electrical in the wall. Can't we just use all that copper as an antenna? And so that's how this works. The sensor talks to the wall. And so again, we're leveraging the existing infrastructure so you can scale. So what are the benefits of that? So it's low power.
49:21
So right now, if you have Wi-Fi, right? You've got a Wi-Fi router in your house. If you go really far away from it, the signal goes down, right? If you add more walls in between, the signal goes down. So you add another router, right? But here, where's the electrical? It's kind of everywhere. It's in every wall. So even though I have one device that's basically receiving all the sensor data,
49:40
you don't have to add all these other devices to repeat that signal because remember, the electrical is everywhere. So the ubiquity of the electrical system helps us out a lot. So at what point do you wind up selling a company? I see why you create one. Yeah, so it's kind of this like, you know, two to three to four year thing, you know? Do I see myself running this company for five years, 10 years and IPOing it?
50:00
No, I think I want to get it to stable state and then who else can take it and accelerate it? So we sold it to, you know, first company was sold to another company who could accelerate it. Next company sold it to a company that can accelerate. So we get it to a point where now it's mature enough that now a bigger company could take it on. Okay, so when do we get rid of this company? This next one? This one was, let's see, 2013, 2012, probably 2012.
50:27
2012, so the first one gets sold 2010? Next one gets sold? 2013, I guess. 2013, barely three to four years. Okay, so you've done that, been there, done that. What's the next big? Yeah, and this is then where, you know,
50:41
at the same time we've had a vibrant research group happening, right? And so this is when we started to say, hey, I already started doing this work when I started as a professor, is how do we use mobile phones for diagnostics and screening? This is solving the healthcare problem. This is also the same realization. What's the most ubiquitous thing that I can build off of? It's the phone. I think in a couple of years it's predicted there's gonna be more phones than people in the world,
51:02
mobile phones, which is crazy to think about. This is the most ubiquitous thing out there and it's very powerful. You know, this phone, just from a few years ago, is more powerful than the ultrasound machine that you have in the doctor's office, right? So that's when I started thinking, hey, now if I could supercharge this thing,
51:20
what can I do from a health standpoint? And this was a pretty wacky concept too. People were like, you're doing what? You're using a phone to do a diagnosis? But little did I know that this would actually become a whole research field. But yeah, so this is an area we started working on pretty much when I started, but then after the sustainability work and the home sensing work,
51:40
I started putting more emphasis on this one because I really wanted to make good strides in this space. And you're in that right now. You haven't sold this. You did. Okay, to whom? So this one was a company called Synosis where we built a bunch of tools. We had an asthma tool, which used the microphone to diagnose asthma. We had an app that looked at using the camera and flash
52:01
to do non-invasive blood screening. So maybe hemoglobin in your blood. You take a picture of the baby to get bilirubin in their blood. You could do sleep assessment, just using the sensors that are already on the phone. And so we created that company and then that got acquired by Google probably two years later. Okay, now you work with Google right now.
52:21
So the company got sold, but your expertise has become associated with projects there. Yes, exactly. So we sold the company and one part of the deal was to help Google with healthcare because they're like, okay, we need that technology and we kind of need you to help do this. But they were really great about this. Google's a very progressive company
52:41
in the sense that they know how to work with academics. So where they're like, okay, no, you can be a professor and work at Google. How many companies would do that, right? And so they understand the value of having foot in academia and they also understand the value of me helping Google do this. You may have answered this already and we're coming to the end of this, but where is your head right now? Or your heart?
53:01
Either organ. Yeah, my competition or my heart is not necessarily present at UW or Google. It's like a battling disease.
53:20
I have a bigger mission, which is solving health disparities, democratizing healthcare. That's where my heart is and however I get there are the enablers for me. But yeah, right now I spend a lot of time at Google but also at the university and I just make it work. But right now I have a mission which is around healthcare
53:41
and that's what I'm going to solve. So that's the last word. Thank you very much. Thanks.
Empfehlungen
Serie mit 66 Medien