"I grew up as a science and math nerd."

"I discovered a love of computing in high school, when personal computing was still fairly new the early 80s."

"The idea that computers could be programmed to lead to intelligence, as in the robots in the science fiction I enjoyed."

"I fell in love with the field of artificial intelligence as an undergraduate in applied mathematics at Carnegie Mellon."

"I aimed at a research career and did my doctorate researching machine learning for mobile robots under the late brill…"

"I discovered a love of integrating the precise and mathematical in computing with the personal and meaningful in lang…"

"The breadth of the field, combining math, computing, linguistics, psychology, philosophy, sociology, and more, is wha…"

"I saw the growing interest in data science as a distinct field, and proposed to the Illinois Tech university leadership."

"I recruited collaborators, led the development of a curriculum, and shepherded the proposal through a gauntlet of cur…"

"I discovered a love for designing and implementing processes the help people learn and perform, and for building effe…"