March 30, 2022 / Podcast Episode

Episode 30: Regina Barzilay Interview

In this episode: Interview with Regina Barzilay, Prof at MIT (EECS). Double immigrant from Moldova (USSR) to Israel (in 1990, at age 20), and then Israel to US (1997, as a housewife and then grad student). Also: Survivor of Breast Cancer.
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Episode Guide

In this Episode 30: Interview with Regina Barzilay, Professor at MIT in the EECS Department, and a faculty at the MIT Jameel Clinic. [Wikipedia] [LinkedIn]. Winner of MacArthur Fellowship or “Genius Grant” 2017, AAAI Fellow, and first recipient of $1M AAAI Squirrel Award 2020 for Artificial Intelligence for the Benefit of Humanity. Double immigrant from Moldova (USSR) to Israel (in 1990, at age 20), and then Israel to US (1997, as a housewife and then grad student). Survivor of Breast Cancer.

  • mm.ss: Segment Info (Index)
  • 0.00: Voices in this Episode
  • 3.38: Biography
  • 5.54: Act 1- Inside the USSR. Early childhood days in Moldova, 1970s and 80s.
    • 5.54: Foggy memories of childhood days in Chișinău, Moldova. And the “uniform” education system throughout USSR.
    • 8.26: The stress of being a good student because you’re a Jew.
      • “In Moldova there were at the time a lot of professions you cannot go to if you’re a Jew.”
    •  10.22: The “quota” system in Moldova against Jews, and a canceled History exam because history was revealing itself.
    • 13.16: When did she realize that the taught history of USSR was wrong?
    • 15.21: Father was born in Siberia during WW2 evacuation, and Mother from Western Ukraine
    • 16.04: What was expected to be of her life – to get married, and to be a top student.
      • “For someone of my background, the most important thing was to get married and find the right husband. That’s what I was groomed to be.”
    • 18.11: Mix of Languages in school, street, and home: Moldavian (similar to Romanian), Russian, and English.
      • “In USSR, all the books were the same… Chisinau, Moscow, or Siberia.”
    • 20.57: Political changes making a mess of life, 1980s
    • 23.12: Mentally handling the lack of career options in Moldova
      • “Being a Jew, my likelihood of being a scientist was close to zero. I wasn’t even considering it as a career.”
  • 24.47: Act 2- First Immigration: Moldova to Israel, around 1990
    • 24.47: Being in limbo, during the migration.
    • 26.50: Entering university in Moldova and then withdrawing after 1 year (to immigrate to Israel)
      • “Oral exam… easy to (fail) you if you’re a Jew… so you had to pass in the written exam… it was very very stressful.”
    • 28.59: First impressions as an immigrant to Israel – color, food, plants, people.
    • 31.17: Future of the Israeli nation was unclear
    • 31.59: Parents had a tough time finding a job in Israel – Father in a gas station, and Mom as a cashier in a supermarket.
    • 33.05: Joining a Kibbutz soon after arriving
    • 33.35: Learning Hebrew language in Israeli kibbutz
  • 34.41: Act 3 – Re-starting University, in Israel, 1990
    • 34.41: Decision to re-start university was natural. Deciding to go to a small university farther away rather than a “super fancy” university nearer to her parents. 
    • 36.51: First computer in life. Teaching in a high school while doing Bachelors. After a few years, moving on from teaching.
    • 38.15: Discovering research. Discovering Natural Language Processing by forced random choice (“Forced to do a thesis”).
    • 41.26: What attracted her to Natural Language Processing: Field moving from Symbolic Grammar-based to Empirical Modeling.
    • 43.15: Love for travel! A trip to Madrid for a conference.
    • 44.18: Story of Not knowing English and yet giving a talk in Madrid. 
      • “In the middle of the presentation I forgot the next word.”
      • “I felt like a failure… I thought it was the end of my academic career.”
  • 48.05: Act 4 – Second Immigration: Israel to US, 1997
    • 48.05: Immigrating to US (Ithaca, home of Cornell University) – again a random choice, because her then-husband moved to Cornell.
      • “And I was a wife”
    • 51.01: Multiple Stories on — Differences between first and second immigrations: Moldova to Israel, vs. Israel to US. 
      • “People will make jokes about your accent, because you are Russian. But I wasn’t Russian.”
      • Story about a neighbor (Israel) helping her write a paper. 
      • Story about a neighbor (Israel) not believing that she was reading a culture magazine.
      • Story about being (mistakenly) treated in Los Angeles as a non-English speaking immigrant.
      • Book referenced by Regina: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie [Amazon]
  • 57.45: Act 5 – Thoughts on STEM/Tech Diversity across 3 countries (Moldova, Israel, US).
    • 57.45: Being a minority (woman) in the computing/Math field in Moldova and Israel and USA
      • “In fact, in my class, the girls were doing better.”
      • “I started hearing of differences after I came to the US.”
    • 59.10: Dealing with biases while convincing people
    • 1.00.16: Her peers in college 
  • 1.01.57: Act 6 – Shocking Breast Cancer Diagnosis and how it changed her life and career, 2014
    • 1.01.57: Being diagnosed with breast cancer. The biggest shock. Not believing that she is the 1 out of 8 who get breast cancer.
    • 1.04.50: Thoughts of Mortality
      • “You don’t know. When you hear you have it, you stop believing the doctor. You forget probability.”
    • 1.06.22: Perspectives on the cancer experience. 
    • 1.08.59: How her cancer motivated her to change her research career. Story of how she got her new research career and new collaborations started. 
    • 1.12.00: Why medicine+ML research is fundamental research and not just “applied” research.
  • 1.16.58:  Act 7 – Retrospective and Perspective 
    • 1.16.58:  Dealing with Failures and Rejections
      • “You need to kiss 100 frogs to find one prince.”
      • “The failure is an inability to understand how much effort you need to put to change (the efforts or project)”
    • 1.21.14: Dealing with Impostor Syndrome
      • “I’m definitely not Shannon”… “Do I belong to this institution”… “Lately… I have goals.”
      • “I am just a vehicle to bring the group (and research) to this point…Who cares if I am smart or  not smart; it’s irrelevant.”
    • 1.23.42: If you had grown up in one country, the US (or in Israel), would life and career have been different?… How the myriad of experiences shaped her.
      • “People who grew up in one place connect to the palace in a  different way than those of us who are replanted to these places.”
Featured in this Episode
Useful Links
Upcoming Episodes

This is the fourth episode in the show’s 4-episode segment on Israel. And it’s also the first of 4 episodes featuring East European countries that used to be behind the Iron Curtain, allied with the Soviet Union.

Stay tuned for another new country next week! Another country from East Europe coming up.

Recently on Season 2
  • Israel Segment
    • Interview with Moshe Vardi, Prof Rice Univ, and Winner of Gödel Prize and Knuth Prize. [Episode 29]
    • Interview with Tal Rabin, Prof UPenn and Head of Research, Algorand Foundation. [Episode 28]
    • From Israel: Episode featuring 3 distinguished Computer Scientists (Tal Rabin, Moshe Vardi, Regina Barzilay). [Episode 27]
  • India Segment: 3 Episodes
    • Interview with Pratima Rao Gluckman, author of book “Nevertheless, She Persisted: True Stories of Women Leaders in Tech”, and immigrant from India, and leader in Silicon Valley. [Episode 26]
    • IIT Madras, Computer Science Batch of 1998: Interview with 7 graduates from that batch (comprising about 25% of the batch). 4 PhDs + 3 Masters. 3 entrepreneurs, 3 industry long-timers, and 1 Professor (host). [Episode 24, Episode 25]
In case you missed it | Season 1 (2021)

Season 1 featured 22 episodes where we visited 5 continents, and 7 countries. Check them out!

 The Immigrant Computer Scientists Podcast is available for free on your favorite devices & apps: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and many more!
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Professor of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign