People of ACM - Bulletin Archive

Dong Yu is a Distinguished Scientist and Vice General Manager at Tencent AI Lab. He has published more than 300 papers on topics including automatic speech recognition, speech processing, and natural language processing. Yu has received many Best Paper Awards, including the prestigious IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award in 2013, 2016, 2020, and 2022. He was recently named an ACM Fellow for contributions in speech processing and deep learning applications. In his interview, he discusses voice processing advances, natural language understanding, and more.

Marlene Mhangami is a software engineer and developer advocate at Voltron Data, based in Harare, Zimbabwe. Voltron Data is a company that is working to develop open-source standards for data. Earlier in her career, Mhangami served as the Director and Vice Chair of the Python Software Foundation (PSF). Mhangami was recently named Vice Chair of the ACM Practitioner Board, which is responsible for developing programs that support the professional needs of ACM members. In her interview, Mhangami discusses the Python programming language, developing open-source standards, and more.

Jeanna N. Matthews is a Professor of Computer Science at Clarkson University and an affiliate of the non-profit research organization Data & Society. Her current work focuses on securing societal decision-making processes and supporting the rights of individuals in a world of automation. She has published research in a broad range of systems topics from virtualization and cloud computing to social media security and distributed file systems. In her interview, Matthews discusses her interest in operating systems, civil discourse in computing, fair and transparent algorithms, and more.

Hang Li is the Head of Research at ByteDance, a multinational internet technology company headquartered in Beijing. Among its holdings, ByteDance owns TikTok, a short-form video hosting service, and Douyin, a Chinese counterpart. Li has published five books and more than 150 technical papers in areas including information retrieval, natural language processing, machine learning, and data mining. In his interview, Li discusses his work at ByteDance and their newest products, human language processing, and longstanding challenges in machine learning.

Shaimaa Lazem is an Associate Research Professor at the City for Scientific Research and Technological Applications in Alexandria, Egypt. Her interests include human-centered innovation, and responsible design of AI systems. She is a Leaders-in-Innovation fellow with the Royal Academy of Engineering in London since 2018, and the co-founder of the ArabHCI Community, an initiative that aims at promoting HCI research and education in Arab countries. In her interview, Lazem discusses her core research interests, decolonial approaches to technology design, and more.

Hemangee K. Kapoor is a Professor and Associate Dean at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati. Her current research interests include multiprocessor computer architecture, emerging memory technologies, power-aware computing, and accelerators for neural networks. In her interview, she discusses the challenges in her research the importance of non-volatile memory, her insights into security frameworks for Network-on-Chip systems, and her experience as a co-guest editor for Communications of the ACM.

Yuta Sugiura is an Associate Professor at Keio University in Yokohama, Japan. His research interests include human-computer interaction, ubiquitous computing, and medical informatics. He has served as a program committee member for various international conferences, including ACM UIST, TEI, and SIGGRAPH ASIA E-Tech. Sugiura was the recipient of the Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ/ACM) Award for Early Career Contributions to Global Research. In his interview, he discusses his interest in human-machine interaction, his work with the Cuddly User Interface (Cuddly UI), the future of smart homes, and his efforts in the medical engineering field.

Sebastian Deterding is a Professor in the Dyson School of Design Engineering at Imperial College London. He has worked extensively in game design, behavioral and motivational design, design ethics, and computational creativity, and is most well-known for his pioneering work on gamification. In his interview, he discusses how he initially became interested in game design, recent advances in AI gamification, his role as Co-Editor-in Chief of ACM Games: Research and Practice (GAMES), and the impact of gaming on society and individuals.

Volker Markl is a Professor of Computer Science, Chair of the Database Management and Information Systems (DIMA) Group, and Director of the Berlin Institute for the Foundations of Learning and Data (BIFOLD) at the Technische Universität (TU) Berlin. He was named an ACM Fellow in 2020 for his contributions to query optimization, scalable data processing, and data programmability. In his interview, Markl discusses data management and AI, the NebulaStream program, his work and receiving the Humboldt Innovation Award, and his role as an advisor to the German government and the European Union.

Manish Raghavan is an Assistant Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Prior to his current position, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Center for Research on Computation and Society (CRCS). Raghavan received the 2021 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for his dissertation "The Societal Impacts of Algorithmic Decision-Making." In his interview, Raghavan discusses his unique role at MIT, de-biasing techniques and the challenges they may cause for antidiscrimination law, and how algorithms shape the online experience across platforms.

Raluca Ada Popa is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is Co-Director of RISELab and SkyLab, two labs aiming to build secure intelligent systems for the cloud and for the sky of clouds, respectively. Her research interests include security, systems, and applied cryptography. Popa received the 2021 ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award for the design of secure distributed systems. In her interview, Popa discusses what inspired her to work in security and cryptography, the challenges and innovations in working with encrypted data, and the role of open-sourcing artifacts in her field.

Pieter Abbeel is a Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is Director of the Berkeley Robot Learning Lab and Co-Director of the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab. He is also Co-Founder, President, and Chief Scientist at Covariant, an AI robotics company. Abbeel is the recipient of the 2021 ACM Prize in Computing for contributions to robot learning. In his interview, he discusses some of his significant breakthroughs, AI learning in robots, and offers advice for aspiring AI researchers

Mark Allen Weiss is a Professor and Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education at Florida International University. He is most well-known for his sole-authored Data Structures textbooks, which are among the most-widely used in computer science. Weiss received the ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award for advancing the art and science of computer science (CS) education through his textbooks, research, and curriculum design. In his interview, he discusses what inspired him to begin writing textbooks, and his work with both the Advanced Placement (AP) CS Development Committee and the National Science Foundation.