ACM ByteCast

• Alvin Wang Graylin - Episode 63

  In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Rashmi Mohan hosts Alvin Wang Graylin, Global VP of Corporate Development at HTC. Alvin is also Chairman of the Virtual World Society, Vice-Chair of the Industry of VR Alliance, and President of the Virtual Reality Venture Capital Alliance. Alvin is a leader in the virtual and augmented reality industries. As a serial entrepreneur, he founded four venture-backed startups across sectors including AI-driven conversational search, mobile social networks, ad tech, and big data AI analytics, spanning both China and the U.S. As an active investor, he funded more than 100 startups and played a pivotal role in the establishment of HTC’s ViveX Global VR accelerator and SOSV’s mobile internet investment incubator. A frequent keynote speaker at leading international conferences, Alvin is regularly featured in major media outlets, where he provides thought leadership on immersive computing (AR/VR/MR), AI, entrepreneurship, venture investing, and the Chinese market. His latest book, Our Next Reality, examines how AI and XR convergence will reshape society. He holds an M.S. in CS specializing in AI from MIT, an M.S. in Business from MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington, focusing on VR, AI, and CPU architecture. Alvin describes his early introduction to technology and computers after immigrating to the U.S. from China and later working at the first VR-focused research lab outside the military at the University of Washington. He highlights some of his pioneering contributions to the consumer PC, mobile, and internet industries in China, including helping establish Intel’s China office. Alvin explains how his background in NLP and AI helped him navigate and address the complexities of Chinese as a language for mobile search and shares some milestones from his work in China, at companies he founded and later at HTC. He touches on the early challenges and limitations of VR, progress made, and its exciting future promise. He also discusses some major advancements in XR technology, its transformative potential for education, and explains the synergy between AI and XR and the need for positive adoption at this pivotal moment in technological history.

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• Jennifer Chayes - Episode 62

  In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Bruke Kifle hosts ACM Fellow and ACM Distinguished Service Award recipient Jennifer Chayes, Dean of the College of Computing, Data Science, and Society at UC Berkeley. Before joining Berkeley, she co-founded the Theory Group at Microsoft Research Redmond and later founded and led three interdisciplinary labs: Microsoft Research New England, New York City, and Montreal. Her research areas include phase transitions in CS, structural and dynamical properties of networks including graph algorithms, and applications of ML. Jennifer is one of the inventors of the field of graphons, widely used for the ML of large-scale networks. Her recent work includes generative AI and ML theory in areas like cancer, immunotherapy, climate change, and ethical decision making, with more than 150 scientific papers authored and 30 patents she co-invented. Her honors and recognitions include the Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Leadership Award, SIAM’s John von Neumann Lecture Award (the highest honor bestowed by SIAM), and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. She serves on numerous boards and advisory committees and has served on the ACM A.M. Turing Award Selection Committee. Jennifer shares her early experience as the child of Iranian immigrants, dropping out of high school and learning to embrace risk. She describes her journey from being a pre-med biology major to a PhD in mathematical physics, and how her love of theory and an interest in interdisciplinary work led her to start a Theory Group at Microsoft Research. She also relates how her later interest in economics and game theory led to the founding of Microsoft Research New England, and highlights some of her work there. She and Bruke talk about the challenges she has navigated throughout her career, and how that has influenced her approach to interdisciplinary research. Jennifer also shares her vision and goals for the College of Computing, Data Science, and Society at UC Berkeley. Finally, she opines on the skills needed for future leaders in computing, some of the urgent problems of our time, and offers some advice to young computing professionals.

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• Roger Dannenberg - Episode 61

  In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Bruke Kifle hosts ACM Fellow Roger Dannenberg, a Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, Art & Music at Carnegie Mellon University. Dannenberg is internationally renowned for his research in computer music, particularly in the areas of programming language design, real-time interactive systems, and AI music. Throughout his career, he has developed innovative technologies that have revolutionized the music industry and is known for creating Audacity, the widely known and used audio editor. In addition to his academic work, His other projects include Music Prodigy, aiming to help thousands of beginning musicians and Proxor, aiming to help software developers launch a successful career. Roger is also an accomplished musician and composer, having performed in prestigious venues around the world. Roger traces his two lifelong passions for computer science and music, and his fascination with the connection between sound, mathematics, and physics. He describes the signal changes in interactive computer music, which once required specialized hardware but has since been replaced by ubiquitous software-based audio processing. Roger and Bruke discuss the promise of AI in music, especially for enhancing creativity and live performance, as well as the challenges of balancing AI with human labor and creativity. Roger also describes his work on the powerful open-source audio editor Audacity (co-developed with former student Dominic Mazzoni), which has democratized music production and is now used by millions of users worldwide. Finally, he talks about some recent projects in music analysis and composition, and reflects on his role as an academic and advisor. 

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• Xin Luna Dong - Episode 60

  In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Bruke Kifle hosts ACM and IEEE Fellow Xin Luna Dong, Principal Scientist at Meta Reality Labs. She has significantly contributed to the development of knowledge graphs, a tool essential for organizing data into understandable relationships. Prior to joining Meta, Luna spent nearly a decade working on knowledge graphs at Amazon and Google. Before that, she spent another decade working on data integration and cleaning at AT&T Labs. She has been a leader in ML applications, working on intelligent personal assistants, search, recommendation, and personalization systems, including products such as Ray-Ban Meta. Her honors and recognitions include the VLDB Women in Database Research Award and the VLDB Early Career Research Contribution Award. Luna shares how early experiences growing up in China sparked her interest in computing, and how her PhD experience in data integration lay the groundwork for future work with knowledge graphs. Luna and Bruke dive into the relevance and structure of knowledge graphs, and her work on Google Knowledge Graph and Amazon Product Knowledge Graph. She talks about the progression of data integration methodologies over the past two decades, how the rise of ML and AI has given rise to a new one, and how knowledge graphs can enhance LLMs. She also mentions promising emerging technologies for answer generation and recommender systems such as Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and her work on the Comprehensive RAG Benchmark (CRAC) and the KDD Cup competition. Luna also shares her passion for making information access effortless, especially for non-technical users such as small business owners, and suggests some solutions.

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• Nashlie Sephus - Episode 59

  In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Rashmi Mohan hosts Nashlie Sephus, Principal Tech Evangelist for Amazon AI focusing on fairness and identifying biases at AWS AI. She formerly led the Amazon Visual Search team in Atlanta, which launched visual search for replacement parts on Amazon Shopping using technology developed at her former start-up Partpic (acquired by Amazon), where she was the CTO. She is also CEO of Bean Path, a nonprofit startup developing the Jackson Tech District, a planned community and business incubator in Jackson, Mississippi. Nashlie earned her PhD from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where her core research areas were digital signal processing, ML, and computer engineering. She has been featured in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, CBS kids’ show Mission Unstoppable, Black Enterprise, Ebony, Amazon Science, AWS re:Invent, Afrotech, and Your First Million podcast, among others. She also serves on several start-up and academic advisory boards along with mentoring others and investing in Atlanta-based start-ups. Her honors and recognitions include the BEYA 2024 Black Engineer of the Year Award, Mississippi Top 50, 2019 Ada Lovelace Award, and Georgia Tech Top 40 Under 40. Nashlie describes her early love for mathematics and music and how these informed her later doctoral research in digital signal processing in music data mining. She shares a personal experience that deeply influenced her work in AI, particularly in responsible AI and fairness, which eventually led her to her current role mitigating bias at Amazon, notably in facial recognition technologies. Nashlie and Rashmi discuss the importance of building diverse teams to practicing responsible AI and building sound products, as well as collaboration with open consortia and organizations such as the Algorithmic Justice League and Black in AI. Nashlie describes the inception and growth of Partpic, an app she started developing while finishing school. She also talks about BeanPath, her nonprofit organization with a mission to bridge the tech gap in Jackson, Mississippi through makerspaces, networking, and community engagement. Links: BeanPath

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