Newsmaker: From math teacher to Turing winner

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How do you think we get more young people interested in math, science and technology?
Allen: I don't really have an answer. I mean these are big, hard problems, actually compiler questions.

You are known for your lifetime work in mentoring people in the tech industry. IBM has even named a mentoring award after you. What about as a mentor: Your greatest achievement there?
Allen: Mentoring is sometimes just viewed as a way of giving advice, providing a place for someone to come and talk through various decisions they're trying to make or what they should do in certain situations. But I also became an advocate for people, actually being a spokesperson and an advocate for women.

Surveys have shown that major software companies are increasing the amount of offshore work that they use. What do you tell your mentees who fear that their job may eventually be lost if this trend continues?
Allen: What I'd tell them is that the very interesting jobs are staying here. It really is the case. The kind of help desk work is going overseas.

It used to be that we had a lot of problems to solve down at the low level, near the machine, near the infrastructure, all of that. Now it's more solving the problems that require integration of the existing lower-level solutions and putting together information from mathematics, from finance and from business modeling.

I want to make use of the opportunities that this award has given me to make some changes, or at least to deliver some messages about the opportunities for women and wonderful opportunities for the technology that we have.

It's the putting together of all of these parts and the building of the PCs so that they can be put together. This is just one example of something that doesn't go overseas.

Can you give me another example?
Allen: In health care--managing records and integrating, doing data mining to find out what kind of drugs seem to be working, or what are the symptoms people are getting. There are many possibilities here that require a lot of innovation and integration.

The Wal-Mart story is fascinating. That company is efficient because it has integrated into one package all of the things that used to be called stovepipes: personnel management, financial management, inventory management, supply chain management, that kind of thing.

With the A.M. Turing Award comes a $100,000 cash award. Do you have any particular plans for that money?
Allen: Yes, I'm going to put it in a fund--and I'll pretty directly manage it--for educating poor people, particularly young women but not exclusively, who wouldn't have the opportunity for an education otherwise. I've done a lot of traveling in the Far East and some particular areas where the possibility of a four-year college education is very inexpensive from our point of view, but just not attainable by many young people.

I was inspired by a visit to an orphanage in Mongolia, mostly nomadic kids who are orphans, and also in Bhutan where they have one university that teaches computing and not many students can go there.

You're also known as an avid climber and belong to the American Alpine Club and the Alpine Club of Canada. Do you think having a physical hobby is important to balancing an intellectual career like computer science?
Allen: I don't know that it helps everybody. But it just keeps me active. I like to explore things, so it's part of who I am. I like to explore new ideas and new spaces, and remote parts of the world. I've been in the nomadic areas of Tibet, and also gone to Bhutan and Mongolia. It's this wonder of the space that we have around us that I like to look into. I like challenges, but that's not for everybody.

So what's next for you?
Allen: I'm going to take a trip to India. I want to make use of the opportunities that this award has given me to make some changes, or at least to deliver some messages about the opportunities for women and wonderful opportunities for the technology that we have. Because I think we are certainly closer to the beginning of computing than where it's going to take us.

Such as what?
Allen: I would like to see the computer languages change to be a little bit more user-friendly.

I don't get into user interfaces per se; there are lots of experts in that. But we build very high-performance computing machines--and they're getting ever faster and ever bigger, not in size but in terms of their capabilities. We've got to find ways for them to be easier to use. I actually have some involvement in all of those things already, as well as quite a lot of activity with the Anita Borg Institute. So, I will certainly continue that.

Is there anything else that you want to let people know as the first female winner of the A.M. Turing Award?
Allen: I will say one thing. One of the reasons I've been so successful is that I've had such wonderful colleagues. I mean, that's been an extraordinary experience. And I certainly would hope that everybody has the same kind of experience because it does really make a difference in the workplace and then in the results of the work.

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