Name: Michael Gross
Hometown:
I started playing video games on a Commodore 64 when I was about 12 or so. I wrote a few simple games in BASIC, but programming it never developed into a hobby. I served in the Marine Corps Infantry for a number of years after high school and during that time my grandfather gave me his old PC (486x Pentium 75 MHz). Learning how to use it was very frustrating for me, but I was hooked on it after only a few days. If I wasn’t in the field or on duty, I was in front of that computer discovering a new use for it. I knew that once I’d finished my tour of duty that I’d be studying programming.
I have a slightly faster computer now, of course, with a Windows XP Pro/RedHat Linux dual boot configuration. I use it primarily as a research tool, digital library, and entertainment center. If I had it my way, there wouldn’t be any bulky media unnecessarily taking up valuable real estate, but my all-digital world isn’t a reality yet.
I once saw a video lecture by Hal Abelson who opened by saying that computer science is not about computers and that it isn’t a science. He claimed that computer science is really a way of formalizing “process” or “how to do things.” If that is the case, I think that a true computer scientist spends most of his/her time researching and contemplating new and innovative “processes.” Because this involves creativity on the highest possible scale, I think that it is essential that the computer scientist be given a number of freedoms: freedom from deadlines/expectations and freedom of choice of study topics stick out in my mind.
My best programming experience was with the “Huffman Coding” project from CPS 100. I had a good partner (a plug for my buddy, John Kang) with whom I really clicked when it came to discussing the nature of the problem and breaking it into easily-digestible pieces. Although we didn’t get it in on time (!), it worked beautifully once we finished it. I’ve forgotten the exact level of compression that we got on the standardized files provided by Professor Astrachan, but I remember comparing our results with those of some of the class’s better students and ours was the best, by far.
In the near future, I see myself using computers as a tool for modeling and predicting biological processes. I don’t fancy myself ever becoming a “Rock Star Computer Scientist,” but I am very much interested in working on some of the more difficult problems in biology, such as predicting a protein’s 3D structure from it’s linear sequence (with several constraints, of course). Ultimately, my goal is to harness the power of computers to extend our lives beyond the ≈120 year limit while retaining good health.