Keith Edwards

I’d been on the west coast, working at Xerox PARC, for about a decade.  Like many of the industrial pure-research labs at the time, their focus started to shift toward commercialization and more applied research, so I decided it was time for a change. I was very fortunate to be able to transition back into an academic position!

Never!  After going straight through undergrad-Masters-Ph.D. I’d decided I was done with academia for a while; it took about 10 years for that to wear off.  🙂

I was in an *amazing* cohort of students when I was in grad school, not only brilliant people, but we had a strong social network as well.

It’s much bigger, for one thing.  There are upsides and downsides to this.  In the early days it felt like everyone knew everyone else, and there were fewer walls between the different specializations.

I’ve always thought GT Computing was incredible in its intellectual diversity (beyond just what we might think of as “core” computer science), and that these other aspects of computing are so valued.  Not every place is like this…

Like I said, intellectual diversity and interdisciplinarity are some of the hallmarks of GT Computing, and that’s influenced my career greatly.  While I consider myself an HCI person, I’ve done a lot of work involving cybersecurity, computer networking, hardware, and other areas, so I’ve tried to reflect those values in my own career.

I’d like to see the intellectual diversity in the college accompanied by other forms of diversity, which have perhaps not been so strong.  We’re making progress in this area, but there’s still a long way to go.