The adventurous life of a system software researcher

This talk addresses the pursuit of scalable and adaptive parallel/distributed systems by presenting the perspectives and lessons learned during my 35 years of project successes and failures. Besides discussing the technical challenges in these projects, the talk also addresses personal aspects of the work relevant to career happiness and maintaining high levels of motivation, commitment, and fun. Following this story of a career centered on designing scalable, adaptable systems while broadening our computing community, the talk will present a short overview of NSF's Directorate of Computer and Information Science and Engineering.