Alfred Zalmon Spector is an American computer scientist and research manager. He is a Professor of Practice in the MIT EECS Department and was previously CTO of

Two Sigma Investments Two Sigma Investments, LP is an American hedge fund headquartered in New York City. It uses a variety of technological methods, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, and distributed computing, for its trading strategies. The fir ...

. Before that, he was Vice President of Research and Special Initiatives at Google.

Education

Spector received his

Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...

degree in Applied Mathematics from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

, and his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in computer science from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

in 1981. His research explored communication architectures for building multiprocessors out of network-linked computers and included measurements of

remote procedure call In distributed computing, a remote procedure call (RPC) is when a computer program causes a procedure (subroutine) to execute in a different address space (commonly on another computer on a shared computer network), which is written as if it were a ...

operations on experimental

Ethernet Ethernet ( ) is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

. His dissertation was titled ''Multiprocessing Architectures for Local Computer Networks'', and his advisor was Forest Baskett III.

Career

Spector was an associate professor of computer science at

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...

(CMU). While there, he served as doctoral advisor to

Randy Pausch Randolph Frederick Pausch () (October 23, 1960 – July 25, 2008) was an American educator, a professor of computer science, human–computer interaction, and design at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pausch l ...

Jeff Eppinger Jeffrey Lee Eppinger (born ca 1960) is an American computer scientist, entrepreneur and professor at the Carnegie Mellon University, School of Computer Science. Biography Eppinger was a student at Carnegie Mellon University, where in 1983, he w ...

and

Joshua Bloch Joshua J. Bloch (born August 28, 1961) is an American software engineer and a technology author. He led the design and implementation of numerous Java platform features, including the Java Collections Framework, the package, and the mechanism ...

and seven others. Spector was a founder of

Transarc Transarc Corporation was a private Pittsburgh-based software company founded in 1989 by Jeffrey Eppinger, Michael L. Kazar, Alfred Spector, and Dean Thompson of Carnegie Mellon University. Transarc commercialized the Andrew File System (AFS), ...

Corporation in 1989 which built and sold distributed

transaction processing In computer science, transaction processing is information processing that is divided into individual, indivisible operations called ''transactions''. Each transaction must succeed or fail as a complete unit; it can never be only partially c ...

and wide area file systems software, commercializing the

Andrew File System The Andrew File System (AFS) is a distributed file system which uses a set of trusted servers to present a homogeneous, location-transparent file name space to all the client workstations. It was developed by Carnegie Mellon University as part of ...

developed at CMU. After Transarc was acquired by

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

, he became a software executive and then vice president of global software and services research for IBM and finally vice president of strategy and technology within IBM's Software Group. Spector joined

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

as vice president of research in November 2007 and retired in early 2015. In October 2015 he was hired by technology-driven hedge fund Two Sigma Investments to serve as the CTO, which he did until mid-2020.

Advisory committees

Spector is involved with academic computer science and has served on numerous advisory committees, including chairing the NSF CISE Advisory Committee from 2004–2005; various university advisory committees including at

City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a Public university, public research university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York ...

, Harvard,

Rice University William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University, is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas, United States. Established in 1912, the university spans 300 acres. Rice University comp ...

and Stanford. He has served on the National Academy Computer Science and Telecommunication Board from 2006 to 2013 and chaired the Computer Science and Engineering Section of the National Academy of Engineering.

Speaking/writing

Spector has written and spoken on diverse topics related to computer science and engineering. In 2004, he described the expanding sphere of Computer Science and proposed the need to infuse computer science into all disciplines using the phrase CS+X. He and his co-authors

Peter Norvig Peter Norvig (born 14 December 1956) is an American computer scientist and Distinguished Education Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI. He previously served as a director of research and search quality at Google. Norvig is th ...

and Slav Petrov proposed a model for computer science research in industry, based on their experience at Google in their paper, ''Google’s Hybrid Approach to Research''. Since 2016 Spector advocated for a balanced and critical perspective on data science, and in the presentation ''Opportunities and Perils in Data Science'', he argued for a trans-disciplinary study of data science that includes the humanities and social sciences. As a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar in the 2018–19 academic year, Spector has presented these positions at various universities around the United States.

Awards and recognition

In 2001, Spector received the

IEEE Computer Society IEEE Computer Society (commonly known as the Computer Society or CS) is a technical society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) dedicated to computing, namely the major areas of hardware, software, standards and people ...

's Tsutomu Kanai Award for his contributions to distributed computing systems and applications. He and other researchers at Carnegie Mellon University won the 2016 ACM Software systems Award for developing the Andrew File System (AFS). He was elected to the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...

in 2004. He was inducted as a

Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned or professional societies, the term refers ...

in 2006 and the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

in 2009, and serves on its council. Alfred appears in the Institutional Investor 2017 Tech 40 and was a

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States. It was founded in 1776 at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences, ...

Visiting Scholar during the 2018–19 academic year.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Spector, Alfred American computer scientists Stanford University School of Engineering alumni Google employees 2006 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Living people Carnegie Mellon University faculty Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences alumni IBM Research computer scientists IBM employees American chief technology officers 1954 births