Thinking About Computers

A conversation with Justin Wong. Justin is a CS PhD student at UC Berkeley studying artificial intelligence and one of the creators of Video Arena. Socials: Website: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~wong.justin/ Twitter: https://x.com/justinywong_ Video Arena: https://www.videoarena.tv/

A conversation with Natacha Crooks. Natacha is an assistant professor of computer science at UC Berkeley, a co-director of the Berkeley Sky Computing Lab, and the recipient of the ACM Dennis Ritchie Doctoral Research Award for the Best Dissertation in Systems Research. Socials: website: ⁠https://nacrooks.github.io/ twitter: https://twitter.com/siobhcroo 00:00 Intro 04:44 Deciding to be a Professor...

A conversation with Justin Jaffray. Justin is a software engineer at Datadog who writes the weekly Null Bitmap newsletter on interesting topics in the world of Databases. Socials: website: ⁠https://justinjaffray.com/ twitter: https://twitter.com/justinjaffray newsletter: https://buttondown.email/jaffray --- Chapters 00:00 Introduction and Newsletters 07:11 Drama in Github Repos 10:58 Convictions i...

A conversation with Leonid Grinberg, a lawyer at Arbol and former software engineer at Bridgewater and at The New York Times. We discuss the differences between life as a software engineer and life as a lawyer, working at an infamous hedge fund, and going to math camp with Sam Bankman-Fried. --- Chapters 00:00 From Software Engineer to Lawyer 06:50 The Cult of Bridgewater 12:22 Engineering at The...

A conversation with Ritwik Gupta, a tech director at the Defense Innovation Unit and a PhD student at UC Berkeley in Berkeley AI Research (BAIR). Ritwik's research explores applications of computer vision to real-world disaster recovery. We discuss the intersection of AI and Policy, research aimed at real-world impact, challenges of balancing a full time job with doing a PhD, and experiences s...

A conversation with Alok Tripathy, a 5th year PhD student at UC Berkeley studying supercomputing and machine learning. We discuss supercomputers vs cloud computing, ranking the world's supercomputers, sports analytics, and evaluation metrics for LLMs. Alok's socials: website:⁠⁠ https://aloktripathy.me twitter: ⁠⁠ https://twitter.com/alokpathy

A conversation with Shm Garanganao Almeda, a 4th year PhD student at UC Berkeley studying the intersection of art and human-computer interaction. We discuss training generative AI without artist's permission, the influence of NFTs on online artist communities, and more! Shm's socials: website: ⁠ https://shmuh.co/ twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/shmu_h

Shreya is a third year PhD student in database management systems advised by Aditya Parameswaran in the UC Berkeley EPIC Lab. Her research focuses on studying machine learning and artificial intelligence engineers to build better tools for them. I am fortunate to be advised by Aditya Parameswaran in the UC Berkeley EPIC Lab. Shreya's socials: website: https://www.sh-reya.com/ github: https://g...

Parker is a 3rd year PhD student in Sarah Chasin's lab at Berkeley. His research focuses on the intersection of programming languages (PL), human-computer interaction (HCI), data visualization, and geospatial technologies. Parkers socials: website: https://parkie-doo.sh/ github: https://github.com/parkerziegler twitter: https://twitter.com/parker_ziegler

A conversation with Chung Min Kim. Chung Min is a 2nd year PhD student at UC Berkeley working with Ken Goldberg and Angjoo Kanazawa on 3D computer vision and robotics. Socials: twitter: https://twitter.com/ChungMinKim

A conversation with Ale Escontrela. Ale is a 3rd year PhD student at UC Berkeley working on robotics and reinforcement learning. Socials: website: https://escontrela.me

A conversation with Samyu Yagati. Samyu is a PhD student in the Berkeley Sky Lab studying systems and security. She is also an excellent fingernail artist. Samyu's socials: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~samyu/

A conversation with Ajay Rayasam. Ajay is a venture capitalist working at Osage University Partners. Ajay's socials: twitter: https://twitter.com/ajayoup

Tianjun Zhang is a 6th year PhD student at UC Berkeley working on RL, LLMs, and other buzzwords related to ML hype. He also has six guinea pigs and laughs every 45 seconds. Socials: website: https://tianjunz.github.io/ github: https://github.com/tianjunz gscholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=UE9jz_MAAAAJ&hl=en twitter: @tianjun_zhang

A conversation with Sam Arch. Sam is a 2nd year PhD student at Carnegie Mellon working at the intersection of databases and programming languages. Sam's socials: website: https://samarch.xyz/ twitter: https://twitter.com/SamArchDB

Jean-Luc is a 6th year PhD student at Berkeley working at the intersection of security and embedded systems, and in particular, in bringing usable cryptographic systems to constrained platforms. He was also on the bargaining team for the nation-wide UAW academic workers strike. Jean-Luc's socials: website: https://jeanluc.io/ github: https://github.com/jlwatson

Ameesh is a PhD student at Berkeley working at the intersection of machine learning and formal methods, with particular focus on applications in cyber-physical systems, robotics, and program synthesis. Ameesh's socials: website: https://ameesh-shah.github.io/ twitter: https://twitter.com/ameeshsh github: https://github.com/ameesh-shah

A conversation with Shadaj Laddad. Shadaj is a computer science PhD student in the Berkeley Sky Computing Lab studying programming languages for distributed computation. Shadaj on Twitter: https://twitter.com/shadajl