2/1/2011 Kymberly Burkhead-Dalton
Written by Kymberly Burkhead-Dalton
1. What do you learn from your job every day?
One of the main things I've learned is that software doesn't need to be perfect the first time. Something that works really well and takes one month to ship is much better than something that works perfectly but takes 1 year to ship. Launch and iterate makes a lot more sense to me now.
2. Do advances in computing capabilities cause for unemployment in the future?
I honestly don't believe so. Because of computing, many things that we couldn't even begin to imagine a few decades ago are becoming possible. In the long term, I think this will actually translate to even more jobs.
3. Mac or PC--and why?
I had been a PC guy all my life until I finally got my first Mac about 3 months ago. Since then, I must confess, I feel like I've started to become a Mac guy. Everything is just so easy and intuitive.
4. Who was your favorite lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and why?
I have to cheat and name two here: Prof. Jiawei Han and Prof. Michael Heath. Prof. Han was my advisor, and I was constantly amazed by his knowledge and insight. He always knew how to point me in the right direction in my research. But I also have to mention Prof. Heath. He not only had a tremendous ability to make the most complicated ideas seem simple, but he also legitimately cared about his students. He always went out of his way to help his students and make sure they understood all of the material. And I went out of my way to take every class he taught (I took 3 classes with him over my last 2 years at UI).
5. How did you manage studying and staying involved in student activities?
This was probably the biggest challenge of college. I think a big part of this was the support of my family and friends, who were always there for me during the most stressful times (yes there were many sleepless nights). I think I was also very fortunate to find student activities that I really enjoyed. Participating in them was always more like a fun study break than a chore.
About Luiz Mendes
Luiz attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from June, 2004 to May, 2008, where he obtained a B.S. and an M.S. in Computer Science. His research focus, under the guidance of Professor Jiawei Han, was on data mining and the subject of his thesis was sequential pattern mining from data streams. Luiz was a member of the Latino/a CS Club and of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity at UIUC. During the summer of 2006, Luiz interned at Allstate Insurance Company, focusing on the development of the company's intranet portal. During the summer of 2007, he interned at Microsoft Corporation as a Software Developer for the next version of MS Word. Since September, 2008, Luiz has been working full-time at Google, Inc. in Mountain View, CA, where he is a Software Engineer for the Platforms team. His main task involves applying data mining techniques to analyze the health of Google's fleet of machines.