Name: Laura Haas
Title: Research Staff Member - Manager
Company: IBM Almaden Research Center
Contact Info: laura@almaden.ibm.com
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/people/laura
How I arrived at my present job (academic and other influences): My love of math, languages and linguistics in high school evolved into a strong interest in computer science (especially natural language processing) in college. I went to graduate school to pursue that interest, but was recruited by a professor there to work on distributed algorithms. My dissertation work on distributed deadlock detection landed me my job in the database area at IBM -- which I only took to put my husband through graduate school (I thought databases were dreadfully boring at the time). However, I so enjoyed my work on that first project that I ended up staying, and eventually even managing the whole database area before deciding that research (in database systems) was my real passion.
How I organize my day: I get to work at 8:05, give or take 10 minutes, after dropping my sons at school. The first hour is for email, phone messages, etc. I try to schedule meetings for close to lunch time, to preserve large chunks of time for thinking/working in the day. I leave work somewhere between 5:30 and 7 pm, depending on my sons' schedules and how organized I've been at home (like, is there any food in the house for dinner?).
Amount of time spent working daily (at home and office): Usually 10 hours at work, 1-2 at home after the kids are in bed.
What I do to get myself thinking creatively: Read about others' work (often that suggests ideas), brainstorm with colleagues.
My problem-solving strategy: Break the problem down into actual tasks that must be achieved, and tackle those one by one. Sometimes a closed door and some music in the background gives me the discipline and focus to think more clearly, especially for problems I find I've been avoiding for one reason or another.
What I do to relieve stress: Walk, 2-3 miles per day. Play with my kids. Read a non-technical book (mostly novels).
My hero, mentor, or person I most admire and why: My mother... she was a professional woman (and a professor) before that was common, she's done internationally-known research in her field (developmental psych), she raised two happy well-adjusted children and is beloved by them and her students alike.
What I do to mentor those who work for me: Help them improve their communications skills, expose them to a variety of opportunities inside and outside the company (working with different divisions, going to conferences and trade shows, etc.), try to understand where they want to go and help them understand what they need to get there.
How a negative event changed my life in a positive way: I did not get into the graduate school of my choice, where I doubtless would have ended up working on natural language processing, and perhaps would never have learned how much I like systems (I certainly would never have ended up at this IBM lab -- with a job I love -- if I had worked in that field).
One event or decision in my life I wish I could go back and change: I can't think of any -- I'm pretty happy with the choices I've made.
What values are the most important to me and what I value in others: What I value in my colleagues (and hope I have as well) are creativity, "smarts", hard work, a cooperative spirit (teamwork), and a strong ethical sense (incl. intellectual honesty).
What inspires, motivates, or gets me excited about my job on a daily basis: I believe the problems we are trying to solve are real and important, as well as challenging. And I'm surrounded by brilliant, supportive people who are at least equally motivated.
Biography: Laura Haas is a research staff member and manager at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose. Dr. Haas joined IBM in 1981 as a research staff member on the R* distributed relational database management project. She worked on the design and implementation of many aspects of the R* system, including catalog management, query processing, and distributed execution protocols. She was co-manager of the Starburst extensible database system project from its inception through November 1989. Technology from this project forms the basis of the DB2 UDB/CS query processor. Dr. Haas then headed the Exploratory Database Systems Department at IBM Almaden for three and a half years. After a sabbatical year at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, she returned to start a new project at IBM on heterogeneous middleware systems. This project, known as Garlic, allows users to ask database-style queries over data that may be stored in diverse (non-database) sources. Publications on these projects have appeared in all the major database conferences and journals.
Before joining IBM, Dr. Haas studied Applied Mathematics and Computer Science at Harvard University, and Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin, where she received her PhD in 1981. Her dissertation explored the problem of deadlocks in distributed systems. Dr. Haas was vice-chair of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on the Management of Data (SIGMOD) from 1989-1997. She has served as an Associate Editor of the ACM journal Transactions on Database Systems, and as Program Chair of the 1998 ACM SIGMOD technical conference. She has received IBM awards for Outstanding Technical Achievement and Outstanding Contributions, and a YWCA Tribute to Women in INdustry (TWIN) award.
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Location: www.acm.org/crossroads/dayinlife/bios/laura_haas.html