Each month, we ask Senior Technical Women to share their stories and what they have learned. This Senior Technical Woman Profile features Sarita Adve, Professor of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
1. How did you decide to pursue a career in technology?
Math and physics were always my favorite subjects growing up, so I applied to engineering colleges after high school. The education system in India did not afford much flexibility and is also fiercely competitive. In hindsight, I feel extremely lucky that I was admitted to the “right” school and made the “right” choice for my major.
2. Based on your own experience, what skill(s) or characteristic(s) do you think are most important for technical women to succeed?
- Passion for your work (you need to believe in what you do, otherwise it gets too hard)
- Ability to handle failure (if you aren’t failing once in a while, you are probably shortchanging yourself)
- Clarity on how you define “success” (understand what floats your boat and make it your focus)
- People skills (students, collaborators, colleagues come in many shapes and sizes)
- Enjoy what you do (you are going to spend a lot of time “working,” so make it fun as much as possible)
- Recognize when you need help and get it – have mentors you trust and respect for all aspects of life, don’t hold back on asking them for advice
- All of the above require an appropriate level of self-confidence – this will increase with success, but you need to start with a healthy dose.
3.What was the greatest challenge that you overcame in your career?
My greatest challenge was roughly the two years after I had my first child. We had moved to a new university (with both my husband and me on the faculty) in a new town with hardly any friends or support system and absolutely no experience with children. There were many times when I thought a successful dual academic career family with young children was simply impossible. Role models would have helped a lot, but I didn’t know any. A visiting senior woman professor encouraged me to get a nanny, which was the best advice we ever got. With time and experience, things settled down, and I am glad I didn’t give up then! (The second baby was a breeze, relatively speaking!)
4. How do you manage work/life balance?
I would rephrase the question as life balance since work is an integral part of my life. Some strategies I use:
Outsource low-priority jobs: I have help for cleaning, cooking, groceries, driving kids to activities, yard work, etc.
Draw boundaries: I try hard to keep weekends for family. I have (virtually) stopped accepting invitations involving weekend travel. I try to minimize travel overall, although between my husband and me, it is still too much. We also have dinner together as a family on most days – this means saying no to evening social events related to work. I am also careful about the service commitments I accept.
Throw away the guilt: It took me a while to accept that I will never be the perfect mom, the perfect researcher, the perfect teacher, the perfect daughter, … Very few people are the perfect anything, leave alone perfect everything. I enjoy and appreciate that I am pretty good at a lot of these things, and I am happy to do the best I can.
None of the above would be sufficient if I didn’t have a husband who was committed to my career and was equally involved in all matters of our family life.
5. What advice would you give to technical women who want to consider an academic career?
I can’t imagine a better career! Especially at a research university, to first order, you have the freedom to do what you want to, no boss to answer to, flexible hours, you are surrounded by very smart people, and there are limitless opportunities for personal growth and self-satisfaction. It is by no means easy, but with the right preparation, attitude, and some help (see skills above), it is not so hard either.
6. How do you stay current in your technical field?
My job as a researcher does not leave me a choice in that matter. I read technical papers, attend conferences, talk to colleagues, attend seminars, and maintain a set of PhD students who are always happy to educate me!
7. In your opinion, what (if any) are the remaining barriers faced by women in technology?
I think Computer Science has come a long way in terms of the work environment. But the gender ratios in academic CS departments at all levels are disturbing. I have a six year old daughter and I am sometimes disturbed by subtle signals that she and her friends receive regarding what girls should like. I think the lack of female role models at all levels is a major barrier at the root of many of these issues.
Biography
Sarita Adve is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests are in computer architecture and systems, parallel computing, and power and reliability-aware systems.
Most recently, she co-developed the memory models for the C++ and Java programming languages based on her early work on data-race-free models, and co-invented the concept of lifetime reliability aware processors and dynamic reliability management.
Sarita is an ACM fellow, received the ACM SIGARCH Maurice Wilkes award in 2008, was named a University Scholar by the University of Illinois in 2004, received an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in 1998. She served on the National Science Foundation’s CISE directorate’s advisory committee from 2003 to 2005 and on the expert group to revise the Java memory model from 2001 to 2005. She co-led the Intel/Microsoft funded Universal Parallel Computing Research Center (UPCRC) at Illinois as its director of research in its founding year (2008-09). She currently serves on the board of directors for ACM SIGARCH and for the Computing Research Association (CRA).
Sarita received the Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin – Madison in 1993 and 1989 respectively, and the B.Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology – Bombay in 1987. Before joining Illinois, she was on the faculty at Rice University from 1993 to 1999.