"Professional Profile" of Randy Pausch
ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee Newsletter,
Volume 1, Issue 8.0, Winter 1996
Q. How would you describe yourself? (professionally and personally)
A. I'm a user interface designer; by formal training, I'm a computer
scientists, but I've learned a bunch of perceptual psychology, cognitive
psychology and industrial design along the way. One way I've described
myself in detail is on my web home page, which is
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~pausch/
Q. What are you currently involved in and where? (job and other gunk, all that
travel that you do that you can talk about)
A. I'm on the faculty at the University of Virginia, where I head the 20-person
"user interface group," which investigates the boundary where people and
technology interact. Right now, we're studying virtual reality. I've also
just finished a Sabbatical with Walt Disney Imagineering's Virtual Reality
studio, which was very exciting.
Q. What are some of your goals? (professionally and personally)
A. That's a hard one. Once you have tenure at a University, you run out of
externally provided goals. Most of my goals are vague and long term: I want
to discover new models for human-computer interaction; we're used to be at a
plateau where it was keyboard and 24x80 CRT, now we're at a plateau where
it's a mouse-based GUI. The next plateau is anybody's guess -- it'll
probably involve voice input in some capacity. My biggest short term goal
is getting the Alice project delivered; that's a system where we're trying
to provide a free, easy-to-learn 3d graphics toolkit on Windows '95. It'll
be available this fall, and we hope it will allow lots of people to play
around with 3d graphics.
Q. How do you utilize computer technology?
A. In my research, we use all kinds of exotic technology to provide an
immersive virtual reality experience to the user. Actually, at that level,
even the word "user" starts to seem inappropriate. We've been using the
term "participant," along I must admit I liked the Disney term, which is
"guest."
On a day-to-day basis, the most important thing computers provide me is a
terrific communications infrastructure. I can run a team of 20 people, a
class with 80 students, and be on the road 1/3rd of the time without it
hurting them too much. In fact, I'm *much* more accessible than faculty who
are in town all the time, but who don't use email, because students can
*always* get a question answered from me quickly -- without email, they have
to try to catch the professor when he/she's in the office, and not currently
busy.
Q. Any dreams? What do you want to do when you grow up?
A. I always wanted to play in the NFL, but I think that's a lost cause. Ditto
for traveling in space. I *don't* want to grow up. Most of the people I admire deeply have managed to keep the child-like wonder alive, well into their elder years.
Q. How did you get to where you are now?
A. Call me in my office any Friday night and I'll tell you the secrets of my
success. The truth is, I've worked hard, I've been lucky, I've had a
wonderful set of mentors along the way, and I now have a very dedicated set
of people I'm working with. My parents gave me a piece of advice that I
took to heart: find something you'd want to do anyway, and let somebody call
it a "job" and pay you for it. It's great advice!
Q. Any heroes? Why?
A. I have a picture of Jackie Robinson on my wall (first black major league
baseball player). It's there to remind me that when there's prejudice or
hostility, the best way to address it is to do your job well.
Q. Would you describe yourself as successful? Famous? How do you determine
either?
A. Famous? Well, I got my name printed in "Variety" (but only because they
printed the SIGGRAPH speaker schedule, so I"m not sure that counts).
Successful? I'm happy, and some people think what I do with my time is
worthwhile, so I guess that means I'm successful. That's a hard one. I
certainly like to think that over the last seven years I've helped a bunch
of students do interesting things, and helped prepare them for life.
Q. Any pet peeves in the computer graphics, computer science,
industry/business/research?
A. The computer science community still doesn't understand the importance of
the human-computer interface. (This feeling that HCI isn't "real computer
science" in fact led to my getting a picture of Jackie Robinson.) To be
blunt, it's a sociological thing - many computer scientists are drawn to the
field because they like clean-cut technological challenges; if they were
highly interested in *people*, they probably wouldn't have gone into
computer science! Combine that with the fact that HCI is inherently less
objective, and you have a self-perpetuating system where HCI is looked down
upon. The real tragedy of this is that it's *terribly* important work, and
if the CS community doesn't do it, some other community will.
Q. Pros and Cons in your choice of profession?
A. Being a professor means total flexibility in how I run my life, and a huge
ability to re-define the job on a year-to-year basis. The downside is that
the ivory tower *really* isn't the real world, and there's a never-ending
struggle to survive. Raising grant money is no fun.
Q. Any advice for aspiring professors?
A. To succeed as a junior faculty member? Be honest and open with people. Ask
senior people for advice, and *take* it! Be prepared to work hard - really
hard. Decide what you want, and how badly you want it. It's almost
impossible to work 40 hours a week and succeed if the person competing with
you is willing to work 70.
Q. Do you have any related hobbies that contribute to your professional
aspirations?
A. Not directly. My hobbies are mostly Scuba diving, sewing, and spending lots
of time baby-sitting my niece and nephew. As hobbies, they have the benefit
that they take all my concentration and energy when I'm doing them, so they
help me clear my mind and *not* think about work.
Q. Any issues that you find people are usually confused bout regarding your
career that you would like to clear up?
A. There is a myth about college professors, which is that we are like high
school teachers. In truth, it's much more complicated than that at a modern
research university. For example, I'm expected to generate enough money
from outside sources (federal grants and industrial sources) to pay my own
salary, pay the tuition and stipend on a half a dozen grad students, and pay
for the equipment and space that we all use. Given that model, one could
reasonably argue that any teaching I do is pro bono. Instead, I constantly
read newspaper articles about how professors like myself are *only* teaching
one or two courses per semester. In fields where we are expected to
generate lots of revenue, I think it's criminal that people don't understand
the nature of the modern job.
Q. Does it bother you that you don't get recognition for work you do on big
projects? or do you?
A. I get too much recognition. I spend most of my time trying to remind people
that the work I show only exists because of the wonderfully talented and
hard-working set of students in our group. In the long run, the payoff is
that the students are now finding that getting into good graduate schools,
or landing good jobs, is easier now that our group has some national
visibility.
Q. Any final points you would like to make?
A. We live in an age of cynicism, and that's very unfortunate. Most students I
see seem to believe that they're adrift in a sea where they have no control
over where they end up. Nothing could be farther from the truth! The key is
to find your passion for something, and run with it!