Microsoft Research Cambridge helps to #makewhatsnext
Celebrating International Women’s Day
If you’ve seen Microsoft’s new #makewhatsnext video, released for International Women’s Day, you’ll note that many of us, children and grown-ups alike, have a difficult time identifying the contributions of women in science and technology. Sure, if pressed, we can come up with Ada Lovelace (for creating the first computer algorithm) or Marie Curie (for her Nobel Prize-winning research on radioactivity). But what about the women who are, right now, on the front-lines of making what’s next?
I was fortunate enough to spend time with some rock-star scientists at the Microsoft Research Cambridge lab, all of whom happened to be women, to get a glimpse into the kind of research they’re doing – everything from the microscopic world of cellular computation to the global scope of distributed computing. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing the stories of some of these spectacular scientists to help inspire more girls to consider courses of study and careers in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). We’ll start that journey with a researcher focused on making computers work better together.
Meet Dr Parisa Jalili Marandi
Imagine that you need to lift a tonne (1,000 kilograms) over your head. Chances are you’d be hard pressed to do so all on your own. If, however, you break that down into 10kg increments and get 100 friends to help you, you’d be able to make easy work of it. That’s sort of what Dr Parisa Jalili Marandi’s primary research area is. Her work in distributed computing research focuses on developing technologies that enable computers to operate more effectively in a large networked environment. In other words, by sharing the workload, these networked computers can process much more together than by working on their own. I had a chance to ask Parisa five questions about her work and career path. Whether she’s talking about code or about sailing, you’ll see that a common thread in what motivates her is an innate love of adventure.
Q: What kind of work are you doing here at MSR-Cambridge?
I work on building large and distributed computer systems. These are systems in which many computers work together, and communicate by exchanging messages over a network to accomplish a task that none of them alone would be capable of performing. For example, all the on-line web services that you interact with, such as Bing and Google search engines, Facebook and many others are powered in the backend by not one but many computers. It is essential to use more than one computer to build these services, as hundreds of millions of people are interacting with them simultaneously. To understand this, try to imagine one million people interacting with your device on which you are reading this article. No one computer has the capacity to respond to this many people at once. If you want to build big things that all the people around the world can concurrently interact with, you need to build ‘distributed computer systems’.
Q: What’s the best, worst, or strangest bit of advice you’ve been given over your career?
A: Best Advice: Keep an open mind. In every interaction with anyone and anything is hidden an opportunity for learning. I have realized the things I dismiss easily are the ones that I know the least about. Rather than distancing yourself from such cases, make an effort to walk through them, no matter how much you don’t want to. You will be surprised but what you have learned at the end of your walk.
Worst Advice: Work hard. A better alternative would be to work smart. Assume you want to cut a tree. If you have a blunt axe it will take you a day to cut it (hard work). But if you allocate 2 hours of your time to sharpen your axe, it will only take you another hour to cut the tree (smart work). The sharp axe here is a smart-cut, in contrast to a short-cut, which after all does not exist if you want to accomplish any task of high quality.
Strangest bit of advice: Make your bed! This is a small task but powerful in that it gives you a sense of accomplishment early in the morning, and fuels you to start your day.
How did you wind up in this role? What made you choose a career in science (or STEM more broadly)?
My interest in computers was triggered by a short TV series: Matt’s Million. Matt’s Million tells the story of a young boy who learns to program a video game on his own, and the game goes on to be well-received by many people around the world shortly after. The fact that a kid could teach himself programming in the first place, and that the knowledge of programming could empower him with such a strength, resonated with me.
It was only until a few years later however, that I had the chance of interacting with a computer for the first time, when I enrolled in a programming course in our high school. It didn’t take me long to realize that programming is an adventure. When you are building something whether virtual (like a software program), or real (like a radio) you are allowing yourself to be surprised by many concepts and facts that you even didn’t know exist. Programming computers was all fun, and as I wanted to have more of it, I decided to pursue my education in computer science.
Who or what inspires you? Do you have any role models?
I am inspired by people like Dame Ellen MacArthur who sailed around the world, Lewis Pugh who swam north pole, and Alan Eustace who leaped from stratosphere. Some of these individuals are not engaged with science or technology, and not all are women. What they have in common however, is their desire for exploring. As I read and learn more about scientists and inventors and watch and listen to the speeches of such great minds as Vint Cerf, and Barbara Liskov, I realize that the passion they have for discovering new things is no different than the thirst the adventurous MacArthur had for sailing the world.
What message would you want to give to girls and young women (or even mid-career women) who might otherwise be discouraged from going into STEM fields?
I believe science and engineering are all about adventure and adventure knows no gender. If you enjoy exploring things, you already have the spirit and the mind-set of a scientist. Continue exploring to continue having fun, and to discover incredible things.
If you want to find out more about Parisa’s adventures in distributed computing, visit her profile page at the Microsoft Research Cambridge lab.
Find out more about how Microsoft is encouraging girls to pursue careers in technology
