Rada Mihalcea Interview

Immigrant Computer Scientists

Episode 33: Interview with Rada Mihalcea, Prof U. Michigan. Stalwart researcher in Natural Language Processing. Double PhD (CS, Linguistics). AAAI Fellow. Creator of PECASE award for junior faculty in Romania. Immigrant from Romania to US in 1997.

챕터

1. Rada Mihalcea Interview (00:00:00)

2. Act 0 – Introduction to and Biography of, Rada Mihalcea (00:03:24)

3. Act 1 – Growing up in Communist Romania, Transylvania, 1970s-90s (00:07:33)

4. Growing up in Cluj-Napoca in Transylvania, amid “dark communism” and supportive family (00:07:34)

5. Money system in Romania in 1970s and 80s. Living paycheck to paycheck. Scrounging for money around the house, just to buy food. (00:14:39)

6. Effect of Nicolae Ceaușescu government policies on her family (00:19:40)

7. Romanian Revolution of 1989 (00:23:01)

8. Act 2 - Early schooling in Romania, 1970s-90s (00:25:58)

9. Going to the National Math Olympiad in Romania, 1980s (00:27:47)

10. Languages she learnt at school, with friends, and at home (00:29:36)

11. Not really caring about diversity (or lack thereof) (00:31:14)

12. First Encounters with Tech (00:33:09)

13. Act 3 - After the 1989 Revolution, Life in early 1990s Romania (00:35:53)

14. Act 4 – Bachelors in Computer Science and Engineering, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, 1997 (00:40:05)

15. The advantage of having the same cohorts at Technical University of Cluj-Napoca (00:46:00)

16. Act 5 – The “Administrative Mistake” that Propelled Rada to apply to the US, 1997 (00:50:24)

17. Women in Bachelors program at TU Cluj-Napoca CS (00:53:29)

18. Act 6 – Immigration to US, 1997. And MS and PhD at SMU, 1997-2001 (00:56:15)

19. Biggest difficulties after coming to US: English, spoken and heard (00:56:16)

20. “I nearly failed my AI class!” (00:59:36)

21. Small inventions when she was a child (01:00:29)

22. Act 7 – Professional Career, 2001-Present (01:03:26)

23. The Romanian PECASE Award that Rada started (Collaboration with local government in Cluj-Napoca) (01:04:56)

24. Act 8 – Her second PhD, in Linguistics, from Oxford University, 2010 (01:08:38)

25. Act 9 – Retrospectives and Perspectives (01:14:06)

26. Handling Failures and Rejections, or How Rada’s failures Rada shaped her career (01:15:30)

27. Handling Impostor Syndrome (01:18:32)

28. The benefits of being an introvert (01:19:55)

29. Alternate Realities (01:21:14)

30. Final thoughts (01:23:21)

31. Thank you and Ending (01:24:50)