In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Bruke Kifle hosts 2024 ACM Athena Lecturer and ACM Eugene L. Lawler Award recipient Maja Matarić, the Chan Soon-Shiong Chaired and Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, Neuroscience, and Pediatrics at the University of Southern California (USC), and a Principal Scientist at Google DeepMind. Maja is a roboticist and AI researcher known for her work in human-robot interaction for socially assistive robotics, a field she pioneered. She is the founding director of the USC Robotics and Autonomous Systems Center and co-director of the USC Robotics Research Lab. Maja is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AMACAD), Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), IEEE, AAAI, and ACM. She received the US Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM) from President Obama in 2011. She also received the Okawa Foundation, NSF Career, the MIT TR35 Innovation, the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Career, and the Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Innovation Awards, among others, and is an ACM Distinguished Lecturer. She is featured in the documentary movie Me & Isaac Newton.

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Rashmi Mohan hosts ACM Fellow and 2016 ACM Software System Award recipient Alfred Spector, Professor of Practice in the MIT EECS Department. He was previously CTO of Two Sigma Investments, and before that Vice President of Research and Special Initiatives at Google. Alfred played a key role in developing the Andrew File System (AFS), a breakthrough in distributed computing that later became a commercial venture. He is also known for coining the term “CS + X.” He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Hertz Foundation, and National Academy of Engineering, and recipient of the IEEE Kanai Award for Distributed Computing.

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Rashmi Mohan hosts Henrique Malvar, a signal processing researcher at Microsoft Research (Emeritus). He spent more than 25 years at Microsoft as a distinguished engineer and chief scientist, leading the Redmond, Washington lab (managing more than 350 researchers). At Microsoft, he contributed to the development of audio coding and digital rights management for the Windows Media Audio, Windows Media Video, and to image compression technologies, such as HD Photo/JPEG XR formats and the RemoteFX bitmap compression, as well as to a variety of tools for signal analysis and synthesis. Henrique is also an Affiliate Professor at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Washington and a member of the National Academy of Engineers. He has published over 180 articles, has been issued over 120 patents, and has been the recipient for countless awards for his service.

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, our special guest host Scott Hanselman (of The Hanselminutes Podcast) welcomes Kate Kallot, founder and CEO of Amini, an impact-driven AI company based in Nairobi, which focuses on the critical issue of data scarcity in Africa and its implications for AI development. Before Amini, her career spanned leadership positions at global tech companies, including NVIDIA, where she led global developer relations and expansion into emerging markets, and Arm, where she was a pivotal figure in the Tiny Machine Learning (TinyML) movement. At Intel, she led the development of the world’s first AI development kit in a USB form factor, the Neural Compute Stick, bringing computer vision and Al to IoT and edge devices to millions for the first time. Kate is a recognized expert and influencer in the AI field, advising international organizations and governments on the potential and challenges of AI for good. Her work has been recognized by TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in AI, the World Economic Forum as a Tech Pioneer, and One Young World as Entrepreneur of the Year 2024. A trusted voice in global AI policy and digital equity, Kate serves as Vice Chair of the ICC Global Environmental and Energy Commission and is a member of EY’s Global AI Advisory Council.

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Rashmi Mohan hosts ACM Fellow Michael J. Freedman, Robert E. Kahn Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University and co-Founder and CTO of Timescale. Michael’s research interests are in distributed systems, networking, and security. Over the course of his student and professional career, he designed and operated the Coral Content Distribution Network, a peer-to-peer content distribution network; co-founded (with Martin Casado) Illuminics Systems, an IP analytics company; and designed TimescaleDB and JetStream. His many honors and recognitions include the 2018 ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award, Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, and SIGOPS Mark Weiser Award.

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, our special guest host Scott Hanselman (of The Hanselminutes Podcast) welcomes ACM Fellow Peter Lee, President of Microsoft Research. As leader of Microsoft Research, Peter incubates new research-powered products and lines of business in areas such as AI, computing foundations, health, and life sciences. Before Microsoft, he established a new technology office that created operational capabilities in ML, data science, and computational social science at DARPA, and before that he was head of the CS department at CMU. Peter served on President Obama’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity and has testified before both the US House Science and Technology Committee and the US Senate Commerce Committee. He coauthored the bestselling book The AI Revolution in Medicine: GPT-4 and Beyond. In 2024, he was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in health and life sciences.

In the interview, Peter reflects on his 40+ years in computer science, from working on PDP-11s and Commodore Amigas to modern AI advancements. He highlights how modern technologies, built on decades of research, have become indispensable. He also talks about his healthcare journey, including work that earned him election to the National Academy of Medicine, and the potential (and limitations) of AI in medicine. Peter and Scott touch on the impact of LLMs, the lack of ethics education in traditional CS curricula, the challenges posed by growing AI complexity. Peter also highlights some important Microsoft Research work in AI for Science and Quantum Computing.

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, our special guest host Scott Hanselman (of The Hanselminutes Podcast) welcomes Mary Lou Jepsen, CEO and Founder of Openwater, a technical executive and inventor in the fields of display, imaging, and computer hardware with about 300 patents published or issued to her name. She founded and led two moonshots at Google X and was later an executive at Facebook/Oculus VR. Prior to this, she was a professor at the MIT Media Lab, where she co-founded and was the first CTO of One Laptop per Child (OLPC), and later founded Pixel Qi in Taipei, Taiwan, focused on the design and manufacture of displays. Jepsen has been named as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine (“Time 100”), CNN’s top “10 thinkers” in science and technology and has won numerous awards numerous from professional societies in the fields of optics, display, and electronics. She’s a frequent keynote speaker, has given two highly viewed TED talks, and is frequently featured in top global press publications.

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Rashmi Mohan hosts Travis S. Humble, Director of the Quantum Science Center (QSC), a Distinguished Scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Director of the lab’s Quantum Computing Institute. He leads the development of new quantum technologies and infrastructure to impact the DOE mission of scientific discovery through quantum computing. As director of the QSC, Travis leads the innovation of scalable, resilient quantum information technologies through new materials, devices, and algorithms and facilitates the transfer of quantum technologies to the broadest audience. He also holds a joint faculty appointment with the University of Tennessee Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education working with students on energy-efficient computing solutions. Travis is Editor-in-Chief for ACM Transactions on Quantum Computing, Associate Editor for Quantum Information Processing, and Co-Chair of the IEEE Quantum Initiative. 

Travis describes his journey into quantum computing, which began in theoretical chemistry, where he studied quantum processes in chemical reactions. He explains the difference between classical and quantum computing and why quantum computing is particularly well suited for scientific applications such as drug discovery and energy solutions. He talks about Oak Ridge’s quantum computing resources and how researchers can access them. Travis also stresses the role education in advancing quantum computing and shares his predictions for its near future.

In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Harald Störrle hosts Darja Smite, Professor of Software Engineering at Blekinge Institute of Technology and a part-time research scientist at SINTEF ICT. Darja is an expert on the future of work and the impact of globalization and offshoring in software companies. She has conducted research with and international companies such as ABB, Boss Media, CALVI, DXC, Emerson Process Management, Ericsson, SONY, Spotify, and, Telenor and has insights from cooperating with offshore vendors in India, China, Poland, Latvia, Ukraine and Russia.

In this episode, part of a special collaboration between ACM ByteCast and the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA)’s For Your Informatics podcast, Sabrina Hsueh hosts accessibility researcher and inventor Chieko Asakawa, an IBM Fellow at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, the Chief Executive Director of The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan) in Japan, and an IBM Distinguished Service Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Chieko’s inventions include the Home Page Reader (HPR); a word processor for Braille documents; a digital library for Braille documents; an application to improve accessibility of streaming services; and, most recently, the AI Suitcase project. Her career has been recognized with numerous prestigious awards and honors, including becoming the first Japanese woman IBM Fellow in 2009, receiving the “Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon” from the Emperor of Japan in 2013, her induction into the US National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2019, being named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, and the ACM SIGACCESS Award for Outstanding Contributions to Computing and Accessibility in 2024.