Moshe Vardi Interview

Immigrant Computer Scientists

Episode 29: Interview with Moshe Vardi. Professor of Computer Science at Rice University. Winner of Gödel Prize (2000), and Knuth Prize (2021). ACM Fellow, IEEE Fellow, AAAS Fellow, AAAI Fellow, AMS Fellow, EATCS Fellow, Guggenheim Fellow. Member of NAE, NAS, and EAS. Topics include: Moshe's childhood and college years in Israel, Fighting in two of Israel's wars (1970s, 1980s), Computing Revolution in the 1960s and 70s, Comparing Industry vs. Academia, and A clarion call to the Computing Community to change the way we view ourselves. And much more! Immigrant from Israel in 1981.

Kapitel

1. Moshe Vardi Interview (00:00:00)

2. Biography (00:03:00)

3. Act 1 - Idyllic childhood in a Kibbutz in Carmel Hills, Israel. 1950s and 1960s (00:05:43)

4. Almost becoming a Rabbi instead of a scientist... (00:20:22)

5. Act 2 - Fighting in multiple wars in the Israeli Army, 1970s and 1980s (00:24:00)

6. Act 3 - Computing in the 1970s, and Entering University (Bar-Ilan University) to study Physics (major) and a minor in Computer Science. 1970s (00:29:57)

7. When punchcards went obsolete... (00:35:03)

8. Act 4 - Starting Research, late 1970s. Language, and state of CS research in Israel (00:38:39)

9. Act 5 -  Moving to US for a Postdoc, 1981. Cultural Differences between Israelis and Americans (00:48:52)

10. Act 6 - The extinct workplace: The industrial research lab. IBM Research, 1984-93. And moving to Rice University, 1993 (00:54:00)

11. Act 7 - Is the Tech Industry today, like the Tobacco Industry, the "Evil Empire"? (01:00:09)

12. Act 8 - Retrospective and Perspective (01:13:57)

13. Hypothetical question: Had he grown up in the US completely, would his life and career have been different? (01:16:11)

14. Parents - Hungarian Holocaust Survivors (01:20:50)

15. Act 9 - Ideas on Improving Diversity in Computer Science (01:22:17)

16. Act 10 - Moshe’s call for thinking about the impact of computing on society (01:32:48)