Computer scientist in profile

Abstract

Of all the undergraduate majors that might steer someone towards an accomplished scientific career and prolific research in Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Computational Structural Biology, you would have a hard time circling 'Russian Language and Literature.' Yet, that is exactly how Bruce's journey started at Yale. Bruce fondly recalls his famous English and Literature professors, such as Harold Bloom and Victor Ehrlich, who left a deep impression on him and played no small part in Bruce eventually graduating summa cum laude in 1980. "The connection with Computer Science was there all along," says Bruce, "though I did not obtain any formal training in CS. I had been a hacker in high school, and I did take some LOGO and Fortran classes at MIT. I hung out with a group of programmers in school and had a job programming and selling one of the first personal computers, the MITS Altair 8800." He recalls that despite his interest in programming, at Yale he almost exclusively took only Humanities courses. The only other courses outside Humanities were a Physics, Calculus, and Artificial Intelligence course.