From Romania

Episode 31: Two distinguished technologists share their experiences of growing up in Communist Romania in the 1960s-1990s, of the 1989 Romanian Revolution, and of immigrating reluctantly to the US. Featuring: Ion Stoica (Prof at UC Berkeley and founder of Databricks, Anyscale, and Conviva, Inventor of Apache Spark, Mesos, and Ray), and Rada Mihalcea (Prof at U. Michigan, AAAI Fellow, Creator of Romanian PECASE Program). Topics include: Growing up in Communist Romania under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu in the 1970s and 80s; Schooling and education system in Romania during 1970s, 80s, and 90s; Romania during and after the 1989 Romanian Revolution; Our guests' Immigration to the US (in 1994 and 1997 respectively); and Perspectives. This is the Lead Episode for the Immigrant Computer Scientists Podcast's segment on Romania (first of 3 episodes on Romania.)