Inteview with Dave Farber on second anniversary of Intel Research Pittsburgh -- full text and reference to complete story on second anniversary of Labs

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

http://www.intel.com/research/network/pittsburgh_collab.htm

David Farber
Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science and Public Policy 
Carnegie Mellon University

 Q1: You came to Carnegie Mellon on sabbatical and decided to stay on 
as a faculty member, in part because of Intel Research Pittsburgh. How 
did the lab factor into your decision?

 A1: It was a strong factor in my decision. I started out in industry. 
About 35 years ago I moved to the academic world, but I've always tried 
to stay involved with industry. Over the years I've been involved with 
lots of companies, and I've had a long-term relationship with Intel 
that goes back about 30 years.

 Once when I was at Intel on a very short sabbatical, visiting some of 
the senior management, I was asked to think about and give advice on 
the issue of what Intel should do in the area of research. So when I 
came to Carnegie Mellon on sabbatical, I was intrigued to see the Intel 
lab near campus and wanted to go over and visit. I found they had 
established a very nice relationship between industry and academia.

 Often you see industrial research labs where academics visit. But 
there's a closer connection between the Intel lab and Carnegie Mellon. 
Faculty and students are involved in the lab's research and attend 
seminars and talks at the lab. Intel researchers also attend events at 
Carnegie Mellon, and several of the Intel researchers have secondary 
appointments at the university. So this is not an industrial laboratory 
that occasionally talks to the university. There is a very close 
relationship-a nice, blurry line between the Intel lab and Carnegie 
Mellon, and it benefits both sides. That was one my strong motivations 
in coming to Carnegie Mellon.

 Q2: How does Intel Research Pittsburgh benefit Carnegie Mellon?

 A2: There are also some things that you just can't do in a university. 
For instance, building state-of-the-art electronics models is a very 
hard job to get done in the university, if you can do it at all. This 
is not the business world; we don't have model shops or fab facilities. 
So having access to state-of-the-art technology such as Intel's is 
invaluable for the university, and often it's the only way you can 
build prototypes.

 Q3: What are the benefits to Intel of the relationship with Carnegie 
Mellon?

 A3: Carnegie Mellon feeds back to Intel the new and exciting ideas 
coming out of the academic world. Today universities, in general, are 
where the new and exciting ideas in the computer business start. The 
university is the place where people can speculate, they can try 
things, they can break the mold. So having a lab in close proximity to 
a university, and having it integrated with academia in the way that 
Intel Research Pittsburgh is integrated with Carnegie Mellon, ensures 
that the new ideas generated in academia will be transferred to 
industry.

In some way, this takes the place of the pure research of the massive 
industrial labs of the past, such as Bell Laboratories. Those huge labs 
were once the places where new, stimulating ideas started, but now 
that's changed dramatically; we're never going to build big industrial 
research laboratories again.

 Q4: Why won't we see large industrial research labs in the future?

A4: Industry as a whole has a very short perspective, because of 
pressure from the stock market for short-term profitability, and that 
tends to drive companies away from research. I wish it didn't, but on 
the other hand, it may turn out that those market pressures will put us 
in a much better position than we were before. We have a lot more major 
universities in this country than we've ever had research labs.

 Q5: Tell us about your involvement with the Intel Research Pittsburgh 
lab.

 A5: I serve as a faculty advisor to the lab. Among other things, I 
helped to teach a recent course Internet-scale sensor networks, which 
was jointly developed by the lab and Carnegie Mellon. My contribution, 
because of some of my current interests and my activities in 
Washington, D.C., was to focus on the societal impacts of sensor 
technology, both positive and negative. It turns out that a surprising 
number of the students really wanted to understand what the impact of 
their work is on society. It was a very popular course, fully 
subscribed.

 Q6: We hear you are also working on a National Science Foundation 
grant for the Internet Suspend/Resume project. What is the focus of the 
grant?

 A6: We want to take the research to the next step, which is to look at 
the security issues that are involved when suddenly the state of your 
machine is more or less taken away from you and then rematerialized on 
another machine. There are a lot of interesting, difficult issues 
involved, such as the guarantee that the information on your machine is 
untouched during the transition. Another issue is that when you hide 
your computer on a file system, you may in some cases want to do all of 
the maintenance on the machine, such as taking out viruses and updating 
software. These are all issues that aren't trivial to actually 
implement. So that's the essence of the NSF proposal, which is now 
being reviewed.

 Q7: You have watched the Intel Research Pittsburgh lab evolve since 
its founding in early 2002. What is your view of the lab's progress so 
far?

 A7: I think the lab has progressed very well. The best gauge of how 
the lab is doing is how Intel's senior management views it. Senior 
management at Intel is very careful about how money is spent. The fact 
that Intel Research Pittsburgh and the other labs in the Intel Research 
Network have been expanded and given full support is the best 
endorsement I can think of. The Pittsburgh lab has passed its honeymoon 
period, and everyone seems happy with the interactions, both the 
university and the corporation.

 The Intel Research Network of labs is a marvelous idea, and a very 
good model for what I believe is the only way we're going to get basic 
research done for the industrial sector in the future. Research is so 
easy to cut for most companies; you can always defer research.

 Q8: Intel seems to keep investing in research.

 A8: [Intel CEO] Craig Barrett constantly says that whether times are 
good or bad, you have to continue investing in research, and he really 
means it. That commitment to research says a lot about Intel's culture, 
and I think it is one of the reasons for Intel's success.

 About David Farber

 David J. Farber is Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science 
and Public Policy in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon 
University, holding secondary appointments in the Heinz School of 
Public Policy and the Engineering Public Policy Group. In 2003 he 
retired from his position as the Alfred Fitler Moore Professor of 
Telecommunication Systems at the University of Pennsylvania, where he 
held appointments as Professor of Business and Public Policy at the 
Wharton School of Business and as a Faculty Associate of the Annenberg 
School of Communications.

More about David Farber.
http://www.epp.cmu.edu/people/bios/farber.htm

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