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

Two Sigma Investments Two Sigma Investments is a New York City-based hedge fund that uses a variety of technological methods, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, and distributed computing, for its trading strategies. The firm is run by John Overdec ...

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

Education

Spector received his

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

degree in Applied Mathematics from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, and his PhD in computer science from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

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 network), which is coded as if it were a normal (l ...

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. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

(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 learn ...

Jeff Eppinger Jeffrey Lee Eppinger (born ca 1960) is an American computer scientist, entrepreneur and Professor of the Practice at the Carnegie Mellon University, School of Computer Science, Institute for Software Research. Eppinger was a student at Carnegie Me ...

and

Joshua Bloch Joshua J. Bloch (born August 28, 1961) is an American software engineer and a technology author, formerly employed at Sun Microsystems and Google. He led the design and implementation of numerous Java platform features, including the Java Collec ...

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 Transaction processing is information processing in computer science 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 comple ...

and wide area

file system In computing, file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to fs) is a method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is stored and retrieved. Without a file system, data placed in a storage medium would be one larg ...

s 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 t ...

developed at CMU. After Transarc was acquired by IBM, 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 technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

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 within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, Cit ...

, Harvard,

Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranke ...

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 December 14, 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 t ...

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 The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operati ...

'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, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy ...

in 2004. He was inducted as a

Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

in 2006 and the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) 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 ...

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, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal a ...

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 Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Living people Carnegie Mellon University faculty Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences alumni IBM Research computer scientists IBM employees American chief technology officers 1954 births