Title: Be Curious! Be Bold ! but really do listen to others

Abstract: This talk will describe how my deep and genuine desire to figure out how things work, coupled by periods of confidence (not always warranted) that I could, given time and effort, succeed in this task, allowed me to explore new areas that I had no business working in. This is not to say that each new adventure went smoothly: most contained times when I questioned my sanity and cursed my foolish confidence. These characteristics combined a general disinterest with long term planning has served me well. My only global strategy was to follow my mom's advice and find work I really loved doing.

Not having long term plans allowed me to follow my nose and take advantage of a number of serendipitous events that crossed my path, which helped me discover what work I loved to do. I will end the talk describing some "lessons" I have learned that have helped me have fun and be successful.

Speaker: Mark Horowitz, Standford University

Bio: Professor Horowitz initially focused on designing high-performance digital systems by combining work in computer-aided design tools, circuit design, and system architecture. During this time, he built a number of early RISC microprocessors, and contributed to the design of early distributed shared memory multiprocessors. In 1990, Dr. Horowitz took leave from Stanford to help start Rambus Inc., a company designing high-bandwidth memory interface technology. After returning in 1991, his research group pioneered many innovations in high-speed link design, and many of today's high speed link designs are designed by his former students or colleagues from Rambus.

In the 2000s he started a long collaboration with Prof. Levoy on computational photography, which included work that led to the Lytro camera, whose photographs could be refocused after they were captured. Dr. Horowitz's current research interests are quite broad and span using EE and CS analysis methods to problems in neuro and molecular biology to creating new agile design methodologies for analog and digital VLSI circuits. He remains interested in learning new things, and building interdisciplinary teams.