GATEWAY STUDY OF
LEADERSHIP
TURNING
POINTS
SCHOOL OF
SOCIAL SCIENCES
Empowering Others
Featuring Engineering
Empowering Others
Turning Points Series Discover nuggets of unconventional wisdom through the excerpts of student interviews with Rice University faculty. Copyright 2014 Rice University. All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the School of Social Sciences at Rice University. Requests for permission should be directed to ipek@rice.edu. Online presence at http://turningpoints.rice.edu.
Books in the 2013-2014 Series III Engineering: Choosing Academia Connecting Ideas Envisioning Solutions Leading Innovation Empowering Others
Previous Turning Points series: 2012-2013 Series II Natural Sciences 2011-2012 Series I Social Sciences
Rice University School of Social Sciences
Gateway Study of Leadership TURNING POINTS
{series III | 2013 - 2014} Engineering
Empowering Others
Gateway School of Social Sciences Rice University 6100 Main Street Houston, Texas 77005-1827 U.S.A.
Turning Points Series DIRECTOR
Ipek Martinez PRODUCER & WEB MANAGER
Alex Wyatt 2013-2014 GATEWAY STUDY OF LEADERSHIP DIRECTORS Nitin Agrawal Cynthia Bau Bo Kim 2013-2014 GATEWAY STUDY OF LEADERSHIP FELLOWS Mariam Ahmed Nathan Andrus Jyra Bickham Mary Charlotte Carroll Sai Chilakapati Rucy Cui Nicholas Fleder Justin Fu Cathy Hu Richard Huang Wendy Liu Michelle Lo Xinnan Lu James McCreary Giray Ozseker Tanya Rajan Andrew Ta Guangya Wang
A NOTE FROM THE GATEWAY DIRECTOR
The 2013-2014 Turning Points series features excerpts from interviews with the Rice University George R. Brown School of Engineering faculty conducted by the Gateway Study of Leadership students. Each year, the School of Social Sciences Gateway Study of Leadership participants are engaged in interviewbased research on leadership themes and lessons offered by academics. During the interview process, students explore topics such as the influence of family expectations on career decisions, the role of mentors, the sources of inspiration for research projects, and faculty thoughts on leadership and the role of academia in our society. This year, the collection also includes thoughts shared by Rice engineering faculty on creativity, innovation, and interdisciplinary collaboration. We hope the stories and experiences featured in these books provide a window into the life of research scholars and demonstrate the different ways that ideas and careers are born and flourish.
Ipek Martinez
CONTENTS
1. 2.
Michael Carroll, Ph.D. Basking in Reflected Glory
1
Genevera Allen, Ph.D. 3 Bring the Most out of Others
3.
E. Neely Atkinson, Ph.D. The Impact of the Teacher
5
4.
Maria Oden, Ph.D. Personal Investment
7
5.
Rob Griffin, Ph.D. Local Community & Local Investment
9
6.
David Johnson, Ph.D. Learning by Teaching
11
7.
Oleg Igoshin, Ph.D. Mentorship not Leadership
13
8.
F. Kurtis Kasper, Ph.D. Rice Fight, Never Die
15
9. 10.
F. Kurtis Kasper, Ph.D. Don’t Micromanage!
17
Ashutosh Sabharwal, Ph.D. Tapping the Potential
19
11.
Luay Nakhleh, Ph.D. The Chance to Explore
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12. Xaq Pitkow, Ph.D. 23 Staying Mindful 13.
Maria Oden, Ph.D. Picking One’s Spots
25
14.
Richard Tapia, Ph.D. A Legacy of Dreams
27
15.
Dan Wallach, Ph.D. The Impossibility of Teaching Leadership 29
16.
Joe Warren, Ph.D. Cultivating Excellence
31
17.
Jacob Robinson, Ph.D. Modes of Mentorship
33
18.
Joe Warren, Ph.D. Live & Let Live
35
19.
F. Kurtis Kasper, Ph.D. Expectations of Excellence
37
20.
Michael Carroll, Ph.D. Acknowledgement of Success
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About the Contributors Acknowledgements
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TURNING POINTS ONE
Basking in Reflected Glory Michael Carroll, Ph.D. Professor, Mechanical Engineering, Rice University
I came to Rice as Dean of Engineering, and that called for a set of skills and a set of ambitions that posed new challenges. There were a lot of different aspects of that job; the main one was being involved with leadership of a group. I found myself nominating or choosing faculty in the recruitment process. Basically, one wants to empower good people and get out of their way. I said one time, “What an administrator should, most of all, have a skill for is basking in reflected glory.” You should, as an administrator, facilitate and encourage and reward accomplishments. Basically, it wasn’t Teddy Roosevelt’s “follow me up the hill,” but it was much more subtle. As a dean, I could provide “such and such resources” and if I talked to the Provost, he might provide more assets for promising scholars, teachers, and researchers. The job often becomes 1
a series of deals, compromises, and plans made in an unselfish environment. For instance: I would not go to the Dean of Natural Sciences with an idea and say, “You have to do this;” but I would say, “Hopefully, we can do this; and it’s going to be exciting for Rice. It’s going to be right for Natural Sciences AND Engineering.” I would say that I learned a lot about cooperation and compromise and the benefit of empowering new, young talent and also, excellent seasoned researchers; and rewarding good teaching, which can be neglected sometimes. The other thing I learned is that there was a time to stop; that 10 years was enough. In fact, it was enough administrating, because my next task was deciding what to do with the next 10 or 20 years! I had to pick up intensive research and teaching again.
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TURNING POINTS TWO
Bring the Most out of Others Genevera Allen, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Statistics, Rice University
Leaders are people who bring the most out of others. That’s how I would define a leader. Let’s just use a specific example of my graduate students, my team. My goal is to get the most out of them, and that includes a combination of me sometimes listening to them and saying, that’s a great idea, let’s explore that - let’s try this your way. And other times, that’s me saying, you know what, this is really the wrong way, I’m going to save you the time and trouble, you need to do it this way. So there’s a fine balance and this has to constantly evolve. That’s at least what I try to do. When I teach a big class, I’m not going to reach every student per se, but the goal is to collectively get the most out of them.
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TURNING POINTS THREE
The Impact of the Teacher E. Neely Atkinson, Ph.D. Professor, Statistics, Rice University
The greatest day I had as a teacher is, a couple years back, I was on a bicycle ride with a bunch of people and someone pulled up the side and said, you’re Dr. Atkinson, aren’t you? I said, yes, I am. He said, I took computer programming from you in 1984 and that was the most useful class I ever had at Rice. And that felt good! I would like people to look back and say, well, that was the most useful class I had at Rice.
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TURNING POINTS FOUR
Personal Investment Maria Oden, Ph.D. Professor in the Practice, Engineering Education, Rice University
My main interest is undergraduate engineering education and using engineering design, as a way to foster an interest and a desire in engineering for students. It is my belief that when students get to work on real-world projects, they find them much more interesting. They are willing to do much more work than they will for traditional problem sets and ultimately they will have much more success. It’s been my goal to find real-world design challenges for every engineering student that comes through the design kitchen, so that they can have that experience. When the student gets really engaged in the project, they stop thinking about the deadlines and the requirements for the class, and they actually start thinking about accomplishing the task that they’re supposed to be doing for their class. The grades stop mattering so much, and the students work twice 7
as hard because they get personally invested in that particular project. We have had a lot of success with our engineering design teams and I feel like part of that is that they’re willing to work really hard. Why are they willing to work really hard? Because the projects they’re working on are interesting and engage them.
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TURNING POINTS FIVE
Local Community & Local Investment Rob Griffin, Ph.D. Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Rice University
My motivation originally, in terms of going into education, simply came from being involved in programs for mentoring undergraduates. It is selfish, but you get a high from it. What I needed early in my career was to figure out how to do that within a given field. For me, growing up, I always liked the outdoors. I grew up very close to the ocean. I was into environment issues - so combining my natural proclivity to sciences and math with my interests in the environment and with my desire to work with people who are younger than I am that could benefit from mentoring or teaching Those were my motivations for getting involved in environmental education. I do air quality research. Doing something that impacts my local environment 9
is important to me. The air quality in Houston is not particularly good. A lot of my research looks at the factors that control the air quality - how is it spatially distributed and temporally distributed. I like making an impact in my own backyard, especially now that I have kids. Doing work locally became much more important to me when I had kids. Previously, I would go wherever the interesting work was. It changes perspective when you have kids because you want to do what’s best for them in the place where you are. So a lot of my research focused on air quality in Houston is motivated by my family. My motivation is not just in terms of work, but also in terms of being a good role model of my kids. Having them see me take good care of myself and support my wife and her endeavors are huge motivating factors for me.
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TURNING POINTS SIX
Learning by Teaching David Johnson, Ph.D. Professor, Computer Science, Rice University
Through teaching, you better understand the material yourself, to organize it and figure out how to explain it to someone else, is different than understanding it yourself; you have to understand it to a much deeper level. So it’s just an interesting way to learn the field better yourself, and then the process of teaching, sort of seeing the students learn, you can tell when they get it, and so it’s satisfying.
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TURNING POINTS SEVEN
Mentorship not Leadership Oleg Igoshin, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Bioengineering, Rice University
Every principal investigator and professor should have a leader in his group. What I’m trying to do is basically teach my group and inspire them, contribute to their goals. I know it’s really hard for me. I still have a problem of grasping what the world of leadership exactly is. I probably see myself as a mentor more than like a leader. I think that’s maybe more appropriate definition in academia than leadership. You’re not trying to be their boss; you’re trying to be their mentor. Not everyone can be a leader and not everyone should be a leader. I don’t think leadership should be a required course of engineering or science at Rice. I am sure it shouldn’t be. There should be an opportunity for the students who are interested in that and who feel like they need help.
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TURNING POINTS EIGHT
Rice Fight, Never Die F. Kurtis Kasper, Ph.D. Faculty Fellow, Bioengineering, Rice University
I have fullest confidence that the students from our laboratory, from our department, from the school of engineering, from Rice in general will all go on to be leaders in various capacities, which may be in the vocation that they choose, it may be in the community in which they choose to live, it may be any combination of these. But regardless, I believe that the Rice environment fosters these leadership skills and I think that the Rice environment is unique in many respects. And I think that once a student transitions through the Sallyport and then beyond the hedges, the journey with Rice doesn’t end there, that there’s an alumni community to which they belong that’s very strong and continued interactions between Rice alumni are very important to the continued success of our university. I think that there are increasing efforts to try and engage students in 15
the alumni community earlier and earlier so that they are aware that the Rice journey and experience doesn’t end when the parchment is on the wall, that one becomes a part of a larger community, and that the expectations of a Rice student and a Rice alumnus don’t necessarily end when journeying out from the Sallyport.
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TURNING POINTS NINE
Don’t Micromanage! F. Kurtis Kasper, Ph.D. Faculty Fellow, Bioengineering, Rice University
An important component of leadership is knowing how to share responsibility. I think that it’s common for a person in a position of power to want to maintain control of everything; you might hear micromanagement being used in association with that concept. But I think that effective leadership involves some transference of responsibility, allowing other people to be responsible for something. In the laboratory, as a director of the research program, I have to allow my students the freedom to do what they need to do. I see that being the critical link between leadership and creativity and innovation in that effective leadership would allow for sufficient freedom within a particular environment for those people to pursue their various research directions with sufficient freedom to explore their curiosity, to drive that innovation. 17
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TURNING POINTS TEN
Tapping the Potential Ashutosh Sabharwal, Ph.D. Professor, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Rice University
Electrical engineering, especially the program at Rice, has been traditionally very good at teaching theory. In last few years I worked to add things into the curriculum where the students actually build something, which means to integrate all they have learned into one single project. That’s senior design. But what we don’t do is sometimes to work with a level of urgency and purpose. The level of urgency only comes if you are self-prepared. If everything is interesting in a course, it becomes a requirement. You say, “it’s a course, I need to graduate, I need to do something with this.” As a result you see a large number of students, e.g. everyone doing senior design, only five out of fifty students will really care about it. So this desire to have everybody to have uniform experience means that there are some people 19
could really excel but don’t get that opportunity. The innovation lab course is designed completely for our department – it’s not open, you have to interview for it. And I put a really high bar on the web page so the only students who are walking in are the ones who really want to do something out of the ordinary. Now I want to give them an opportunity to actually excel to the level they can potentially have. The thing is that we don’t know what that potential is and more importantly, I think they don’t know either. It’s going to be completely student-run, student-led class, and they would actually go for something really ambitious, which may potentially become a company if they want to. They could take it forward and I can help them because I have some experience on how to actually take it through all the initial stages. That’s the philosophy, whether we succeed or not remains to be seen. Fortunately, I like to experiment in education methods. I actually ran this course in different forms for two semesters and learnt from those first two rounds and applied those lessons to this round.
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TURNING POINTS ELEVEN
The Chance to Explore Luay Nakhleh, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Computer Science, Rice University
There are major differences in the education system between Israel and the United States. Israel, the system is when you apply to college in Israel, you apply to a department, so I applied to computer science, I was accepted into the computer science department from day one, as a computer science student, knowing that, and the only option for me to change, I mean, is to apply to a different department as a new applicant, whereas in the United States, students usually apply to a general school, they say I am an engineering student, or natural sciences student or social sciences student, they are undeclared for some time, and then they choose a major, sometimes even in their third year, so this is a very big difference between the two. There are pros and cons to each one, in Israel, because you start from day one in a major, you can afford, not just you can 21
afford, but you take many more classes in that major, so you specialize in that major because from day one you start taking these courses, whereas in the United States because it takes you time to declare a major, until you explore fields, so you tend to take fewer courses in that area. The other thing which is a major difference is that in the United States it’s a liberal education, so I teach in computer science, but my students here, undergrads in computer science, they do have to take classes from humanities, and social science. In Israel, they don’t. I was four years computer science, I did not have to take classes, actually the university I went to, did not have social sciences or humanities or anything like that, again you take only computer science, I had to take physics and math classes, they were the ones beyond computer science, but even no biology and no chemistry, which is ironic given that I ended up in computational biology. In that regard, I prefer the US system, again the pros for the Israeli system is that if you go to the department and you major and it turns out that it’s really the major that you wanted to do, you will have very good in depth knowledge. But what are the odds that a student finishing high school really knows what college is about and what a degree in computer science means? 22
TURNING POINTS TWELVE
Staying Mindful Xaq Pitkow, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Rice University
One of my mentors recommended a book called “Advice for New Faculty” by Robert Boise, and there he recommends moderation in all things. I think an impulse is for people to cram and wait for a passionate inspiration. If you don’t get it, then to just wait longer. It is sort of passive waiting. Instead, here the idea is active waiting, where you’re just on the backburner and you’re thinking about things and just being moderate about it and not forcing yourself to have inspiration when it’s not there, but just put yourself in a calm and patient situation. Basically, do a lot of preparation, and bring all the threads you might weave together and make sure they are in the right place, and have space for yourself to do the kind of work that you want to do on a daily basis, so active waiting, mindfulness, and patience. 23
If you’re teaching, or you’re presenting something, make sure you have enough room for pauses. Pauses for yourself to reflect so that you’re not hurting - one of the problems is that when people get nervous, or they are trying to pack too much in, they speed up and they actually deliver less information. So by being calm and patient can help deliver more. You can do better by yourself and by your students that way. To keep motivated it has to be an intrinsic motivation, you just have to love the stuff you are thinking about. I think if you don’t have that and it becomes a burden, then it just will not become successful no matter what habits you cultivate. Of course, I don’t know that for a fact, that is just my suspicion extrapolating from me. I love doing what I do; it is one of the most amazing privileges for me to be able to think about thinking, it is what I do for my job every day. I just come and talk to people and think about the brain works, it is sort of a blessing. That for me is the motivation, the study itself.
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TURNING POINTS THIRTEEN
Picking One’s Spots Maria Oden, Ph.D. Professor in the Practice, Engineering Education, Rice University
I think that the students who have been most successful have, once they’ve figured out what their goal is, worked really hard to be as prepared as they can be for that goal. That’s not to say that students can’t question which direction they want to go in as they’re making a decision about what is next after their undergraduate degree. However, I do think that sometimes really strong students will get in a trap where they have been able to keep every door open all their lives- so they can go to med school, they can go to grad school, or they can go get a job. They have never given up on any of these options. At the end of their senior year, they’re faced with having to give up on something. They can’t do all three. It is a hard process, but I think the students who are able to fully make a decision at some point and then move 25
towards that decision will be most successful. If they find out it is the wrong choice, they can change it. If they decide they want to go to graduate school, they don’t keep spending all the effort to also be qualified to apply to medical school. They make a decision and then they focus. They do their best to achieve their goals and they don’t kind of waffle back and forth amongst a lot of options.
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TURNING POINTS FOURTEEN
A Legacy of Dreams Richard Tapia, Ph.D. Professor, Computational & Applied Mathematics, Rice University
My mother and father came from Mexico.
My
mother came as the charge of her 10-year-old sister, so she came with no parents, by herself, as a little girl, to the United States. My father was 7. He had older brothers. So they came in search of education for themselves. When they got here, they had to support themselves and so neither one of my parents graduated from high school, but they always had this burning desire for education. My mother lived in a small town and her father who was not always there – he’d come and visit; he had several families – said, “I found a great place for you to go. You’re smart, go to the United States, go to Los Angeles and education will be yours.” But they had to support themselves. So at 12 and 13, my parents started working. My mother started to work for a Jewish family. She took 27
care of the cooking, the cleaning, the washing, at the age of 13. My father worked for a Japanese family in Los Angeles. So their entire dream of education was passed on to their children. There were five of us and my mother instilled in us the value of doing things right. That doesn’t mean necessarily education, but just doing things right: working hard, having positive values, and she believed education could take you anywhere you want, and at the end of the education rainbow was a pot of gold. My brother went to Yale, my sister went to Stanford, I went to UCLA and my other brother went to UCLA. So a woman who never graduated from high school had four of her five kids at Stanford, Yale, or UCLA. My mother instilled in us a desire to succeed. She would say just go forward, one step at a time and do good things. If you go forward, one step at a time, good things will happen. If you work hard, good things will happen. I went to UCLA, and from there I kept going forward and while I was not a star, I went to graduate school, and then to a university position.
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TURNING POINTS FIFTEEN
The Impossibility of Teaching Leadership Dan Wallach, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Computer Science, Rice University
You can’t teach somebody to be a leader.
In the
same way that you can’t teach somebody to be an amazing genius, they just are. You can teach anybody accounting, but you can’t necessarily teach somebody how to beat the stock market. You know what I mean? In the same way, leadership is something that, some people rise to the opportunity, and other people are crushed by it. I’m not convinced that I can train you one way or the other. And the military thinks that they can. But military leadership is a far narrower thing in many respects. They start off teaching you how to lead a platoon or whatever the smallest grouping is, and you work your way up, and each job in the military is very carefully prescribed. You are the general in charge of logistics, you are the 29
general in charge of strategy, you are the general in charge of…and they all have very, very well-defined roles. The real world is never that clean.
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TURNING POINTS SIXTEEN
Cultivating Excellence Joe Warren, Ph.D. Professor, Computer Science, Rice University
To be a good mentor, you have to understand that the students you’re working with can be just as smart as you. They just don’t have the knowledge and the experience that you have. The critical thing is to give them kind of a general guiding hand, point them in the right direction to gain that knowledge, gain that experience. We get to pick a research problem that they’re working on—I kind of understand what needs to be done and I may even know the solution at some step but I turn the student loose on it and let them work on it, let them flesh it out, let them feel the enjoyment of actually solving it. I give them the chance to kind of get the experience, the pleasure of doing research and creating new research. To me, I think that’s the critical thing because when you get that experience where you say, “Wow! I just figured something out and maybe nobody else knows this,” 31
that’s a very satisfying feeling. This happened to me as an undergraduate, and some of the students that have had this have gone on and done very well. It’s the case that— I think that is what has kind of turned them on is the— I liken this to your prospector for gold. So I’m this very kind of, you know, wizened guy. I’ve got my mule and I’m out digging and I’ve got an apprentice. So what I do is say, “Hey, I think there might be gold over here,” but I don’t go dig it up myself, I just put the apprentice to work and he digs and, you know, if I’m a good mentor, there’s a good chance that he might find something there. So what I do is I give them less and less guidance the more and more experienced they get, until they’re ready to basically do everything on their own. But the key to a good mentor is to know exactly how much guidance to give and then just gradually step back as the student matures.
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TURNING POINTS SEVENTEEN
Modes of Mentorship Jacob Robinson, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Rice University
I had what I think I would consider three mentors. Starting my freshman year I started working at – maybe even four mentors – I started working freshman year in the electrical engineering department at UCLA. And I ended up working all four years with him. And he kind of inspired me to do research. And at the same time my freshman year I started working in the physics department for another professor, David Saltzburg, in high-energy physics. And he was more, I think, of an emotional inspiration. He’d sit down in an office and he would chat and I would ask him questions and he would draw things on the board and I felt like every time I met with him, I felt like I learned something and I felt like I knew a little bit more about the world. And I was like, “Ah, one day I can do this with people and 33
it’ll be great.” And so the two of them really put me on the path, and then the third person that I worked for was Hong-Wen Jiang in the physics department. I worked really hard to get into his lab. He doesn’t take a lot of undergraduates. He keeps a very small lab, maybe three grad students at a time, often no undergrads. And I worked really hard to get into his lab, and once I was in his lab he treated me like a grad student, and was really nurturing as an advisor. Basically, I had an advisor-advisee relationship like a lot of people would have in grad school. And that really made me feel good about going on to grad school. And it also, I think, helped mold the way that I try and interact with my undergrads now. You know, I had such a positive experience where I could come in and be treated like a grownup and eventually work my way so I can deal with experiments, and that’s what… and I feel like now I have to pay it forward. So undergrads come in and I’m like, “Don’t worry, you don’t know anything, we’ll throw you in there, you’ll break something and it’ll be fine.” And I think that the combination of those experiences is definitely what put me solidly on the track as an undergrad. 34
TURNING POINTS EIGHTEEN
Live & Let Live Joe Warren, Ph.D. Professor, Computer Science, Rice University
What do I want to be remembered by? I have to say, I’m not sure that I’m worried about that. I want to, while I’m alive, I want to do things that are interesting and contribute to humanity and make for a better place in there. And when I’m gone I’ll be gone, so I’m not worried about what people think. I think the reality is I want access to a place where I can do cool stuff. I hope that that cool stuff will help the world. I, you know, we’ve taught this class, it’s very popular and sometimes we get a pat on the back and somebody says good job and we get some accolades on that. But the thing that keeps me coming back is not the fact that somebody says wow good job. It’s not the reputation. The things that I found most satisfying in that class are things like, you know, I had a mother who had like a five year old and she had to give up working as a computer 35
scientist, and so she said that this was the first interesting intellectual thing she’d done in five years. I had a thirteen-year-old boy from Norway who was trying to get through the class and he would send me emails like some kind of crazy time during the night because he was desperately trying to get the projects going. So kind of some personal moments there where I feel like I was helping one person. And that, to me, was very satisfying on there. But I don’t know what I want to be remembered for. I mean, I think I’d like to be remembered for doing good work that helps people, but in terms of my motivation for driving, it’s the pleasure of solving interesting problems that really drives me.
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TURNING POINTS NINETEEN
Expectations of Excellence F. Kurtis Kasper, Ph.D. Faculty Fellow, Bioengineering, Rice University
I think that there is a lot of familial influence into who you are at the very earliest stages of life. You kind of are directed by your environment. My family was very effective in presenting me with opportunities to explore many different things; to explore athletics, to explore the arts, and certainly the expectations of my parents and grandparents were that I would excel to the best of my ability in school academically. That was the priority. But there was always an emphasis on looking outside of just the classroom and grades to get exposure to the arts and to what happens outside of the classroom. That really, once you finish school, constitutes the majority of life. I think that those expectations certainly framed who I am very early on in life in that I felt a desire to meet those expectations, so I certainly did my level best to make straight A’s in school. 37
That wasn’t always the case, but I did a pretty good job and I think that that set the framework for me personally to have personal expectations of excellence. Some people that you might run into in life don’t really expect the best from themselves and that’s why— if that’s how they choose to be, it may work very well for them personally. But for me I was always pushed to excel and I expect that of myself. I think that’s reflected in how I continue with my life currently.
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TURNING POINTS TWENTY
Acknowledgement of Success Michael Carroll, Ph.D. Professor, Mechanical Engineering, Rice University
A very close colleague at Berkeley who influenced my career wrote a very nice recommendation for me when I came to Rice. He took me out to lunch and said, “Mike, I’m going to tell you one thing above all: the important thing as an administrator is to choose the right person for the job, to facilitate their doing the job, and to celebrate and to reward their succeeding at their job.” The rewards could include publicity, money, special equipment, or space, or advancement. There are many different ways to reward hard work and success. When my friend at Berkeley gave me this advice, he emphasized: “And above all, don’t forget to acknowledge and praise success.” So, if one’s going to choose a faculty member to be a department chair, for instance, the first thing one should ask is, “Can I bask in reflected glory, if he or she does well here?”
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ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Dr. Genevera Allen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics at Rice University. Her research interests include developing mathematical tools to help scientists understand massive amounts of data sets that are produced by technological advances in medicine, engineering, the Internet, and finance. Her applied research interests include neuroimaging, high-throughput genomics, imaging, and metabolomics. Dr. Allen received her B.A. from Rice University in 2006 and her Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2010. Dr. E. Neely Atkinson is a Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and a Senior Lecturer in the department of Statistics at Rice University. His research interests are exploratory analysis of survival data and hyperbolic matrix decompositions. Dr. Michael Carroll is the Burton J. and Ann M. McMurtry Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, and professor in Computational and Applied Mathematics, at Rice University. He was born in Thurles, Ireland, in 1936, came to the U.S. in 1960 and became a naturalized citizen in 1970. Carroll earned his B.A. in mathematical sciences and master’s degree in mathematical physics from University College, Galway, in 1958 and 1959, respectively, and his Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Brown University in 1965. He received the D.Sc. for published work from the National University of Ireland in 1979.
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Dr. Rob Griffin is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rice University. Dr. Griffin’s research involves aerosol thermodynamics and chemistry, air pollution transport, atmospheric chemistry, regional air quality modeling, and urban air quality. Dr. Griffin’s research interests lie in performing field, laboratory, and computational experiments designed to understand the effects and behavior of organic species in the troposphere. Dr. Griffin received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Tufts University in 1993 and his M.S./Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Caltech in 1997/2000. Dr. Oleg Igoshin is an Associate Professor of Bioengineering at Rice University. His primary research involves the design principles and characterization of biochemical networks, pattern formation in bacterial biofilms, and genetic networks in bacterial and stem cell development. First pursuing a B.Sc. of Physics from Novosibirsk State University in Russia, Dr. Igoshin graduated summa cum laude. After receiving a M.Sc. in Chemical Physics from Feinberg Graduate School Wiezmann Institute of Science in Israel, he received a Ph.D. from University of California at Berkeley. Dr. David B. Johnson is a Professor in the departments of Computer Science and Electrical & Computer Engineering at Rice University. His research interests include network protocols, distributed systems, operating systems, and the interactions between these areas. Dr. Johnson received a B.A. in Computer Science and Mathematical Sciences in 1982, an M.S. in Computer Science in 1985, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1990, all from Rice University.
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Dr. F. Kurtis Kasper is a Faculty Fellow in the department of Bioengineering. Dr. Kasper’s research focuses on the development and evaluation of novel biomaterial-based approaches for tissue regeneration, cell encapsulation, and the controlled delivery of thepeutics. He received his B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University in 1999, and his Ph.D. from Rice University in 2006. Dr. Luay Nakhleh is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Rice University. His research is in the bioinformatics field and develops methodologies, through implementing software tools and conducting analyses, that are aimed at answering and empowering research into biological questions, specifically evolutionary questions, his main topic of interest. Dr. Nakhleh was born and educated in Israel. He received his B.S. in Computer Science from the Technion in Israel, his M.S. in Computer Science in Texas A&M and a Ph.D. degree at UT Austin. He is the recipient of numerous teaching and fellowship awards such Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, John P. Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and more. Dr. Maria Oden is a Professor in the Practice of Engineering Education at Rice University, and Director of the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen. Dr. Oden received her B.S.E. in 1989, M.S. in 1991, and Ph.D. in 1994; all from Tulane University. She has more than 15 years of combined academic, research, clinical experience in biomedical engineering with an emphasis in orthopaedic bioemechanics and computational modeling. This work is also supported by three years of experience in computational modeling working with engineering consultants at SageCrisp Engineering in Houston, TX.
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Dr. Xaq Pitkow is an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University with a joint appointment at the Baylor College of Medicine in Computational Science. His primary research focus is on developing theories of the computational functions of neural networks, especially how they compute properties of the world using ambiguous sensory evidence. Dr. Pitkow received his A.B. in Physics from Princeton University in 1997, and a Ph.D. in Biophysics from Harvard University in 2006. He held a postdoctoral research fellowship at Columbia University from 20072010, followed by a postdoctoral research scientist position at the University of Rochester. Dr. Jacob Robinson is an Assistant Professor in Electrical & Computer Engineering at Rice University. His research group uses nanofabrication technology to create devices that can perform large scale high resolution studies of neural circuit activity. Dr. Robinson graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a B.S. in Physics in 2003. He then entered the Applied Physics Ph.D. program at Cornell University. In 2008, he joined Professor Hongkun Park’s research group in the Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department at Harvard University. Dr. Ashutosh Sabharwal is a Professor of Eletrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University. His research includes “distributed” network information theory, full-duplex wireless communications, directional communication on mobile devices and scalable health. Professor Sabharwal received his B.Tech. in electrical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi in 1993 and his MS and PhD in electrical engineering from the Ohio State University in 1999.
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Dr. Richard Tapia is a Professor of Computational and Applied Mathematics at Rice University and MaxfieldOshman Professor in Engineering. He is also Director of Richard Tapia Center of Excellence and Equity and Director of the Empowering Leadership Alliance. His research interests involve mathematical optimization theory and iterative methods for nonlinear problems, algorithms for constrained optimization problems and interior-point methods for linear and nonlinear programming. Dr. Tapia received a B.A. in Mathematics in 1961, a M.A. in Mathematics in 1966 and a Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1967 all from University of California, Los Angeles. In 2011, Dr. Tapia received the National Medal of Science from President Barack Obama. Dr. Dan Wallach is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Rice University. His research involves computer security, particularly as it relates to web browsers, peer to peer systems, smartphones, and voting machines. Dr. Wallach received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 1993, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Princeton University in 1995 and 1999, respectively. Dr. Joe Warren is a Professor of Computer Science at Rice University. His research interests focus on the application of computers to geometric problems and are centered around the general problem of representing geometric shapes. More specifically, he works with computer graphics, computer gaming, geometric modeling, and visualization. Dr. Warren received his B.A. from Rice University in 1983 and went on to complete his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1986.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Special thanks to Rice University’s George R. Brown School of Engineering faculty who graciously spent time sharing their career experiences and educational life stories with the Gateway students through one-on-one interviews. Much appreciation goes to School of Social Sciences Dean Lyn Ragsdale for her ongoing support of the Gateway Study of Leadership program. We would also like to give special recognition to Dr. David Nino, Dr. Phillip Kortum, Dr. David Johnson, Dr. Sergio Chavez and Dr. Royce Carroll, as well as Rice alumni Neeraj Salhotra (’13), Amol Utrankar (’14), Danny Cohen (’14) for their contributions to the training of the 2013-2014 GSL fellows, and to Ms. Jennifer Gucwa for her assistance with editing the publications. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to the Gateway Associates and the supporters of the Gateway program for making projects like this possible. Many thanks also go to the current and past Turning Points team and the GSL fellows for the tremendous amount of time and effort they commit to bringing the faculty stories to life.
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