Oh, the Places You'll Go!

Name: Vagelis Papalexakis

Assistant Professor, UCR

Computer Science & Engineering

I was born and raised in Athens, the capital of Greece. At 18, I moved to Crete for my undergraduate in Electronics and Computer Engineering. The financial crisis had not hit Greece as hard yet, but I nevertheless really wanted to study abroad and get my PhD, preferably in the US, where it seemed like all the innovation was happening in my field. I bought study guides for the GRE and slowly started what seemed an almost impossible process of applying for grad school in the US.

In the meantime, I was doing research with my undergraduate thesis advisor at the time, and I was fortunate enough to get my paper accepted at a good data mining conference, which that year was happening in Sydney, Australia. My advisor encouraged me to go, and despite the almost non-existent funding in Greek universities at the time, he was able to cover some of the expenses. After 20 hours and a layover in Bangkok, I landed in Sydney one day before the conference. My talk was on the first day, but I went out in the city and saw the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge instead of practicing. Later in the evening, jet lag was my friend that helped me stay up and made sure my presentation timing was right. This was the first ever talk I would give in English, but for some strange reason I was not letting myself naturally freak out. I suspect that my walk around beautiful and sunny Sydney (in December) had helped.

The next morning, I went to the conference venue, registered, and found the room I was supposed to give the talk. The time finally came, I went up there, and my memory is a bit blurry for the next 20 minutes, but I very vividly remember the first person who asked me a question right after my talk, because I would see him nearly every day for the next 5 years. Yes, my future advisor was in the audience. He asked me a question and we had a nice research discussion, and then him, his students at the time, and I hit it off for the rest of the conference. I didn't read anything into this as potentially playing any role in my PhD admissions (and will never know the exact truth). Fast forward a month later, a Sunday afternoon, I received a phone call from a strange-looking foreign number. I picked it up, and it was the department head of the CS department of Carnegie Mellon University, calling me to congratulate me on my admission to their PhD program (yes! they called every single admitted student!). I thanked her, while at the same time trying to figure out who was pranking me, since "there was no way it's real", until I received the official documents and an invitation to the open house later that month in the mail.

My next stop was Pittsburgh, PA and Carnegie Mellon University where I spent 5 wonderful years doing a PhD in Computer Science. Pittsburgh was a vastly different place from Greece; that first winter was a big shock for me, given that a few flurries in Athens meant that the whole transportation network is paralyzed, but a few flurries in Pittsburgh meant that it was just October. Polar vortexes aside, I loved every single moment during my PhD. The experience was made special by the great diversity of people that I met, interacted with, and became friends with during that time. It would take pages for me to describe every single adventure (academic and otherwise) during those years, so I'll just say that if you pick your conferences right, you may end up doing the literal round of the globe in two weeks :). During my PhD studies, I strategically spent a few summers away from the hot and humid Pittsburgh, doing internships at different tech companies in Silicon Valley. I will always cherish those summers. I worked with and was mentored by so many amazing people. That's also when I fell in love with California, and always knew that one way or the other, I'll somehow end up there.

I have a big passion for independent research, and combined with my (little at the time of finishing my PhD) teaching experience, my dream job was to become a professor at a research-active university. Fast forward to Fall of 2015, a bit less than a year from graduation, I started preparing my application materials for the academic job market. The feeling was that familiar hopelessness that I felt when I was preparing my grad school applications a few years before. Nevertheless, I bit the bullet and started doing what I was supposed to. Sometime, early December (famously "dead time" before the interview season), I received a phone call by someone, quite senior in the field, whom I had met at a conference a couple years back, when he was chairing the session that I gave a talk. He told me that he saw that I was on the job market and he would very much like to bring me in for a interview early in the season, because he liked my work.

This boosted my confidence and kicked off a successful job market adventure, which ended with me accepting an awesome offer by the Computer Science and Engineering Department at UC Riverside. That phone call seemed to have come out of nowhere, but looking back at my entire trajectory, I think I can put things in perspective: hard work is absolutely necessary, but very often, some people with whom you cross paths during your life can make a huge difference; I will always be grateful to all the advisors, mentors, and friends (senior or junior) who, even unbeknownst to them, have helped me, and I hope that I can give some of that help back.

#whotellsyourstory #professor #ComputerScience #studyingabroad #travel