session: how do i become a leader in my field? how do i become a leader in my field? deb agarwal,...
TRANSCRIPT
Session: How do I become a leader in my field?
Deb Agarwal, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Carla Gomes, Cornell University
Irene Greif, IBM
IntroductionI’m a professor of Computer Science at Cornell UniversityFocus of my research:
– Computational methods for large-scale constraint-based reasoning and optimization, considering deterministic and stochastic environments, in single and multi-player settings.
I exploit connections between different research areas — in particular, artificial intelligence, operations research, complex adaptive systems, and the theory of algorithms.
Joint appointments in Computer Science, Information Science, and Applied Economics and Management
Academic perspective, research university
A little more detail about my work
Boosting Combinatorial Search Through Randomization
GoalStart
Planning
Scheduling31 - 45: ACPOWER? 0 NUM-UNAV-RESS 1UNAV-RES-MAP (DIV2 D24BUS-3 D24-2 D24-1) (ACPLOSS D24BUS-3 D24-2
ROME LABORATORY OUTAGE MANAGER (ROMAN)
Parameters Load RunParameters Load Run
AC-POWER StatusAC PowerDIV1DIV2DIV3DIV4
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 Layout Design
Quasigroup Completion
Mission Route Planning Air Tasking Order
COMPUTATIONALLYHARD PROBLEMS
WHY THEY ARE HARD
EXPLOSIVECOMBINATORICS
Planning is Hard
Contingency Planning is VERY Hard
10! ~ 3.6 million PLANS
No-RestartsApproach
Logistics Planning 108 mins. 95 sec.
(*) not found after 2 days
EXPONENTIAL-TIMEALGORITHMS
RUN TIME
%
IND
IVID
UA
LIT
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RE-START EVERY 4 SECS.
RUN TIME (LOG)
NO RE-STARTS
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TE O
F FA
ILU
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(LO
G)
RestartsApproach
POWER LAW DECAY(FRACTAL DIM
ENSION)
STANDARD EXPONENTIA
L DECAY
(E. G
., NORM
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T.)
SPEED-UPS OF SEVERAL ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE
EXPLOITING HEAVY-TAILSTHRU RANDOMIZED RE-STARTS
POWER LAW DECAY
Scheduling 16 ---(*) 1.4 hrs
Scheduling 18 ---(*) ~22hrs
Scheduling 14 411 sec 250 sec.
Circuit synthesis 2 17 mins.---(*)Circuit synthesis 1 165 sec.---(*)
10 228 PLANS
EXPONENTIAL FUNCTION
POLYNOMIAL FUNCTION
RUN TIME
DISCOVERY OF UNUSUAL DISTRIBUTIONS WITH HEAVY TAILS & INFINITE MEAN & VARIANCE
RANDOMIZEDRE-START STRATEGY
SPEED-UPS OF SEVERALORDERS OF MAGNITUDE
Recently I’ve become deeply immersed in the establishment of
a new research field concerning the Sustainability of Humanity and our Planet
6
Sustainability and Sustainable Development
The 1987 UN report, “Our Common Future” (Brundtland Report):
Raised serious concerns about the State of the Planet.
Introduced the notion of sustainability and sustainable development:
Sustainable Development: “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.”
Gro BrundtlandNorwegian
Prime Minister Chair of WCED
UN World Commission on Environment and Development,1987.
Computational SustainabilityNew interdisciplinary field that aims to apply techniques
from computer science, and related fields (e.g., information
science, operations research, applied mathematics, and
statistics ) to help solve Sustainability challenges.
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Sustinability and Sustainable Development encompasse balancing environmental, economic, and societal needs.
Institute for Computational Sustainability
Data & Machine
Learning
Balancing Environmental &Socioeconomic Needs
Conservation and B
iodiversity
Dynamical Models
Constraint Reasoning
& Optimization
Resource Economics,Environmental
Sciences & Engr.Ren
ewab
le E
nerg
y
Bowdoin
Expeditions in Computing
(CISE)
Some advice based on my experience…
Be Passionate about Your Research!
• Set your goals and standards high to do significant and solid work, GREAT work
• Be bold – have the courage to ask hard questions and pursue big ideas and visions!
• Become emotionally involved with your research and
Be passionate about your research
Be driven and committed
• Work hard, very long hours!– Success is 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration!
• Solid work and steady commitment will get you surprisingly far! Persevere and go deeper into questions to create solid contribution
• Great work requires dedication, passion, hard work.
• Focus on an important problem/question obsess about it and get rid of other things and tasks…
Be Confident and Positive!!!Believe in yourself , believe that you can pursue important/hard
problems. If you don’t believe in yourself, it’s almost sure that you will not succeed.
Control your “natural” impulse of saying (women):I don’t know; I can’t do it…
Challenge yourself - often I’ll say - I’ll do it and then I figure out how to do it …
Look at the positive of things rather than the negative – make lemonade out of lemons –
Research Topics• Follow the literature, know what is “hot” • Relate your work to your community (communities)
• Generalize – Don’t work on very specific real world isolated problems - show that what you are doing is not just a very specific case – rather it solves a class of problems; you may have to abstract out some details of the problem:
- often leads to more elegant solution procedures and methodologies
- others can follow up on your work – science is cumulative ! - applies to more problems
- Now and then you may have to shift what you are doing (5-7 years) because you tend to use up your ideas you have to change ; not a dramaticac shift, you will also bridge ideas from your past work, but a bit of change is good - you need to get new view points and courage to do that
Research
• Ability to deal with uncertainty with ambiguity – ability to tolerate not knowing what to do next…
• Balancing act:
– Be confident, believe in your ideas and work so that you start projects and keep working on the hard questions
– Be critical - so that you can question the results and develop different hypotheses … but not too critical that you never start or give up…be confident!
Collaborations and Networking • Actively look for collaborations
– very important way of getting different viewpoints, different approaches, and also disseminating your ideas!
– sometimes challenging in your own department your students, your postdocs, other departments, outside university
– when deciding where to go (postdoc, sabbatical, new job etc) pick places where you have a chance to interact and collaborate with exciting people.
– don’t be afraid to co-author papers with other researchers, more senior researchers in particular– Get involved in grant research projects and collaborations.
• Network– network and interact with research leaders and your peers (professional interactions
not based on personal interactions); with people you expect great work from and also who expect great work from you
• Travel a lot, go to conferences, be on program committees, NSF panels, get involved in activities with your peers
“Selling ” your work Not good enough to do great work – everyone is too busy; unless they are exposed to your
good work and ideas they don’t learn about it…once they know about it, then the quality of your work will speak for itself….
Papers --- write clearly and well so that – people enjoy reading about your work and get excited about it;– people learn what you are doing and know how to replicate it, extend it, adapt or
modify it.– PUBLISH,PUBLISH, PUBLISH or PARISH
Learn how to give talks– Formal talks– Informal talks
Don’t turn down talk opportunities Web page – make everything available - papers, open source!!!
Papers
Should you try publishing a few "seminal" papers or publish more
frequently?
Both. Definitely aim for seminal (e.g. "best") papers but also publish follow-up results, related work etc. There are so
many publication outlets, you need to be at a good fraction of them to reach enough people.
Also, remember, when it comes to tenure, there is a famous saying:
"Our dean can't read but he [or she I have to add] can count! :-)
Technical Talks• A heavy-duty technical talk will lose the
audience!• More productive:
– Start with a good motivation and high level picture - also show how what you are doing is not just an isolated problem; relate your work to your community (or communities)
– Go into some technical detail – Go back to the big picture summarizing the key ideas
and outlining future directions
After graduate school
• Spend time at a research lab before going to a university . Great time– to focus solely on research
– to forge new collaborations
• University– Teaching and advising will take a good amount of research time– As you get more senior and get more known you end up on lots of
committees and it gets harder to do research work and even work on nice small problems – in particular, challenging for women in Computer Science since there are so few!!!
– Potential mistake – too much time on committees, teaching, advising - balancing act!!!!
Final thoughts Serendipity:
make your own luck, create opportunities:
chance favors the prepared mind
aim high, do great work, work hard, work hard, work hard, network, collaborate, talk to people from different fields, read a lot, write pleasant technical papers (also good to write general audience science papers) and give great talks – formal and informal - think big, be confident but with a critical mind….
R. Hamming and J. F. Kaiser. You and Your Research.Transcription of the Bell Communications Research Colloquium Seminar
Emily Toth. Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia