Hi! My name is Eric Klavins and I am the Chair of the University of Washington Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. On behalf of the entire department, it is my great honor to welcome you to the 2021 UW ECE Graduation Ceremony. Having our graduation ceremony online instead of in-person is a bittersweet ending to an incredibly difficult year. But, graduates, in some ways it makes your accomplishment even more impressive. You completed one of the most challenging programs at the University and you did it in the face of incredible adversity. All of us in the ECE department are incredibly proud of you. I would also like to acknowledge all the parents, families and friends who supported our graduates in this last challenging year and throughout their pursuit of their degrees. Well done!
Each one of you has a unique life experience that brought you to our department. Some of you came from Seattle or Washington or elsewhere in the United States. Many of you came from outside the U.S. You may have joined the UW as a freshman, transferred from a community college, joined as a graduate student, or left industry to get another degree. You may have lived on campus or commuted. You may have been the first one in your family to get a degree
or the first to get a degree in engineering. Wherever you came from, you will now combine your life experience with your new expertise in engineering to create something truly unique. We are all incredibly excited to see what you do next. While a student, you went to lectures, did problem sets, stayed up all night working on projects, learned to solder and learn to code. You aced exams and maybe even failed one or two, but you kept going. Many of you did internships,
worked as graders, as teaching assistants, or as research assistants. You made new friendships and worked closely with your future colleagues. Those of you who are graduating with advanced degrees created entirely new knowledge. You learned to do independent research, publish papers, present your work at technical conferences, mentor and teach, submit patents, and maybe even start companies. It was incredibly hard work and what you have accomplished is really impressive. You have earned a degree from one of the best universities and one of the best departments in the entire world. Now, as they say, the world is your oyster. You might get a job
in industry or pursue an advanced degree, you might continue to study engineering, or combine your skills with law, medicine, business or social science. Whatever you do, remember that your expertise here taught you most of all to learn. You are an expert at learning, and learning does not stop when you graduate. In fact, it increases at an even greater rate. So I encourage you to embrace your ability to learn and to apply it to the problems that matter most. Find ways to help the community and the world around you. You can address humanity's greatest challenges. You can develop technology that serves everyone, not just those who look like you
or share the same background or abilities. Strive to build diverse teams where everyone feels welcome and included. Making the world better is not only your opportunity but it is also your responsibility. Graduates, I also want you to know that you will always be part of the University of Washington and part of the Electrical and Computer Engineering department. We are very proud of our alums. They have gone on to do so many amazing things, from bringing cell phone coverage to Myanmar like ECE alum, Pwint Htun, to running the entire information technology group at a major corporation like ECE alum, Diane Jurgens. Wherever you go, I know I speak for our
entire department when I say we would love you to stop by and tell us of your adventures and perhaps even help us mentor the next generation of students. Our door will always be open. Now, I would like to introduce today's graduation speaker, Rico Malvar. Rico is a research and industry leader known for his work in signal processing and data compression.
He is a strong advocate for expanding diversity in engineering and developing accessible technology. Rico is a Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft and currently leads the Microsoft Research Enable Group, which aims to empower people living with disabilities. His past roles include being Chief Scientist for Microsoft Research and Managing Director of Microsoft Research, Redmond. He joined Microsoft research in 1997 and founded the company's Signal Processing Group, which developed new technologies such as the media compression formats used in Windows Xbox and Office, as well as audio technologies used in Windows Xbox Kinect and Hololens. He also made key contributions to developing compressed file formats used by most web video services today. Rico has been a tremendous supporter of UW ECE for many years. He has been a UW ECE affiliate
professor since 1999 and served as Chair of the UW ECE advisory board from 2012 to 2019. He serves as a key connection between Microsoft and our department, generously giving us his time, his enthusiasm and his expertise. Rico was chosen to speak at UW ECE Graduation because we believe he embodies excellence and dedication to the profession of engineering. His work represents the kind of impact we hope all our graduates will make on the world - engineering with social good in mind and helping to make technology truly accessible for everyone. Please welcome Rico Malvar. Good evening. Thank you, Eric, for your warm welcome. It is an honor and a privilege to speak to you today in this special evening. First, I want to congratulate the parents, family
members and friends of the graduates for all you have done for them, especially the parents, for whom this is such a special moment in their lives. I am forever grateful for the sacrifices and great advice from my parents and I am sure all graduates share that same sentiment. I remember my college graduation back in Brazil, my home country, back in 1977. Right after the ceremony, my grandmother approached me and said, "Well, you are now an electronics engineer. That means you can now fix appliances, change bulbs, and even fix the TV if needed, right?" It's funny, but she wasn't kidding! She was actually very proud of what I had accomplished. As you know, graduation is not an end. It really is a beginning - the beginning of your professional life,
which I hope, like mine, will be a wonderful adventure full of challenges and opportunities. I also hope that you will have dreams and will work hard to achieve them. For example, even though I started my career in Brazil, I had the dream that one day I would complete a graduate degree in a top engineering school in the United States. With a good combination of hard work, opportunities and luck, that did happen, nine years later, when I completed my PhD degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And I was fortunate to have so many positive professional experiences, including being an affiliate professor at the UW Electrical and Computer Engineering department for over 20 years. I have been the Director of Microsoft Research Labs here in Redmond in Washington for several years, and many other fruitful professional opportunities. You may be thinking, what advice would you give
us to bridge the gap from where we are today to become a successful and impactful engineer? Well, there's really no formula for that, but let me share some aspects of my journey. First, the passion. Our profession is really exciting. Each decade that goes by, we see tremendous progress in all areas of electrical and computer engineering, from devices, systems, hardware, software and many other things. The field is impacted by societal changes and sometimes even
drives societal changes. For example, we invented mobile phones and now everybody's glued to them. When I got my PhD, only a few people had mobile phones and at that time the phones were gigantic and all they did was make calls. Uh, today it's even funny that we still call the mobile phone a phone - it's really cool a portable computer that does so many things, including being a window to a good part of our social life. And yes, it also goes from phone calls, but not by
using numbers, but rather little icons with our friends and pictures on them. We can count on the fact that each decade will bring significant advances, such as cars that drive themselves, devices that can be controlled by your thoughts, devices that will understand the behavior of your pets or perhaps even your kids, and much more. Besides that fundamental passion to invent and build new things, other principles have served me well in these past 40 years. One is to be bold, to be fearless. Failure is normal, we learn from it. And success is often temporary, so don't
rest on your laurels. That means be adaptive, be willing to learn, be willing to revisit old ideas, fight inertia in thinking, don't seek comfort in having your plan in life as highly predictable. As John Lennon used to say, "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans." Another
is to be a champion for inclusion and diversity, equity and inclusion. The ultimate goal of technology is to help people, and we should always think about who we are helping and how we are helping them. Even if I am designing just a component of a bigger system, think about the impact that component will have to bring more value to people using it. Make sure that people of all backgrounds and abilities can benefit from the technologies we create. Also think of inclusion, equity and diversity not only in users, but also in design teams. Embrace people who look and think
differently. Great ideas come from everywhere and from everybody. For example, in the early 40s, the famous Hollywood actress, Hedy Lamarr, invented frequency hopping spread spectrum communications, which was the basis for advanced secure military communication systems at that time, and later a foundation for the technology that supports mobile communication, so it's in our mobile phones today. Seek collaboration, give ideas away, don't think about "my" project, but rather think about "our" project, even if you're the formal creator and leader of that project. Motivate all team members
to think about "our" project. Have a positive attitude, assume people are well-intended. Most of the time they actually are. That will help you develop more empathy, better understand people's challenges, and help them solve those challenges. That brings up team motivation, and a motivated team can be easily three times more productive than a demotivated team that's just "doing the job." Be good in communication. Learn how to explain what you do to any person,
be simple, be clear, direct, even in technical reports and papers. For example, don't say things like, "In our experiment, the biota exhibited 100% mortality response." Just say, "In our experiment, all fish died." I test myself all the time. I try to explain my projects to my family members - to
my wife, to my kids. If they can understand it, I work on, if they cannot understand it, I work on finding better ways to explain it. Very important - do seek social impact. As I said, technology is for people, and we can think not only of empowering each person, but also empowering society more broadly. For example, if you develop a technology that makes computing
easier to use for people with disabilities, you're contributing to a more inclusive society. With advances that can help professionals do a better job in medical diagnostics and treatment, you can improve the health of society more broadly. For example, you saw the impact of how new technologies for vaccines were key to getting us out of the COVID-19 pandemic. We're almost there. Another way to think about social impact is to see what we actually have
the responsibility to give back. Remember that your family, friends, colleagues, professors, the UW and society in general - we have all invested in each one of you. We really must give back. I'm so grateful to the support I always had from my parents, from my wife, from my kids and all my family. We moved across continents, we moved across the U.S., always seeking new opportunities. And without their support, I would not have had any of my successes. And more, the more you gather experiences, share it with your younger colleagues. For example,
I spend a fair amount of my time at work mentoring colleagues, sharing bits of my experience with the caveat that they will be building their own. Don't assume that I'm always a good model. So let me close by congratulating again all of you on your amazing accomplishment of becoming an engineer, a graduate from the University of Washington Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. That is the first milestone of your professional life as an engineer and I wish you all a lot of success in achieving many more great milestones through your career. Go invent and build new technology for the next generation. Society needs you! Hello, Class of 2021. You did it! ECE is proud of all your accomplishment and happy to share in the excitement of your graduation day. As ECE faculty and staff, we cherish the
relationships we've built with you. Thank you for all that you've contributed to the ECE department as active learners in the classroom, dedicated researchers in the laboratory, involved participants in student organizations, and leaders for innovation. Although we can't be together in person this year, we are so glad to be coming together virtually to celebrate your achievements. We want to commend all of you for your hard work during your time in ECE, especially during this time of uncertainty in multiple quarters of remote learning. We know that there have been countless challenges, but you have faced them with resilience and determination. When transitioning to online learning, we witnessed firsthand your perseverance, grit and ability to adapt in order to continue your academic studies. When it was not possible to connect in person,
we saw you come together as a student community, finding ways to connect and engage virtually. When your peers and people around the world experienced loss, pain and turmoil, we felt the care and empathy you had for one another in the face of hardship and injustice. With your persistence and hard work to complete the degree in this hard time, we are confident that you will be able to accomplish any future challenges in front of you after graduation. We are inspired by all of you and we appreciate everything you have done to make the ECE community special. Even though you are graduating, you will always be a part of the ECE community, now as ECE alumni. Today, we are gathering together to celebrate you and applaud your many accomplishments. Your future is filled with possibilities and we
know that you will continue to achieve great things and change the world for the better. Just as we are proud of all that you have accomplished, you should also feel a sense of accomplishment for a job well done. We hope you're able to celebrate, surrounded by the love and support of friends and family even if they are cheering you on from afar. We wish you
the best wherever your journey takes you next. We know you have a bright future ahead of you. Congratulations!
2021-06-12