My answers to the questionnaire

10. My name is Jerod Weinman. For this course, I prefer to be called any of the following: Professor Weinman, Dr. Weinman, or (in egalitarian Grinnell College style) Mr. Weinman, whichever you prefer.

11. My hometown is Alliance, Nebraska, in the central Nebraska panhandle west of the sandhills. However, I also lived in the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts.

12. I studied Computer Science and Mathematics (double major B.S.) at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, a similarly-sized school in Terre Haute, Indiana that focuses on teaching engineering, math, and science.

    My PhD in Computer Science came from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I specialized in computer vision and machine learning. My dissertation research involved designing algorithms for a system to help the blind navigate by reading text from images (such as street signs and storefronts).

13. In addition to this course, I am teaching the "Digital Age," which is an algorithmic (like this class) and social overview of computer science. I am also teaching "Algorithms and Object Oriented Design," which covers a different model of computation for solving problems and some fundamental topics relating to information organization and access.

14. Unlike today, when I started with computers, it was still unusual to be first exposed to them as a one year-old, which I was when my dad brought home his first Apple ][. This is the same computer I first learned to program on in junior high. (My first was a quiz program about baseball trivia.) I was excited by the opportunity to practice creative thinking and problem solving that could be applied to whatever other interests were at hand. As an undergraduate, an introductory course on image processing led me to my research area where I am often faced with reverse engineering a different kind of "computer"--the human visual system.

15. As always, I look forward to getting to know my students and their approaches to learning about computation. I also can't wait to see your creative processes at work in your projects.

16. Even if you are not a Computer Science major or choose not to take any further CompSci classes, my biggest concern is that you will all see the utility of computational thinking and not be dismayed by the utter stupidity of computers. (You really do have to tell them exactly what to do!)

17. You can ask me about the landmark of my hometown in Nebraska, my earlier involvement as a college radio DJ, my stint as a frontman for a punk band in a previous life, or how well I'm doing with my hobby of playing fingerstyle guitar.

What questions do you have for me that have not already been answered?

What do you do in Grinnell apart from teach?

At the college, I also pursue my research in vision with undergraduate students. Outside of that, I'm currently enjoying cross-country skiing and I fish frequently in the summer. I play fingerstyle guitar, but not as often as I used to.

I would like to know what is it about computer science that you enjoy or like the most.

That's a hard, but wonderful question. I love the challenge of a good problem and the satisfaction of coming up with a model or program that successfully answers a question or solves a problem. It's rather like building with legos. Thinking about and tinkering with the raw building blocks of information until you manage to assemble them in the way that makes sense.

How did you first get interested in computer science and programming?

One option at a summer camp I went to in seventh grade was a short course in BASIC programming. The interactivity of that experience left a big impression on me.

I want to know what interested you in computer science over other fields.

Why did you favor computer science to engineering?

Partly early exposure, and also success in that field. Before I found computing, I was very interested in electronics and would likely have been an electrical engineer. For me, it's all about the joy in solving problems.

Why becomes a professor as opposed to working in a computer company?

I enjoy working in academia because I have more freedom to choose the problems I wish to pursue. In addition, I get the chance to work with wonderful students like you. Honestly, every day is new. I love that.

I'd like to know what this discipline can do for my major area.

Whatever your field, I firmly believe there's a computational spin. Take anthropology. You can use computers to build models that represent your latest hypothesis on (say) migration, simulating important parameters to determine whether the results of the simulation agree with observed evidence. That's just one example.

What book do you remember most (distinctly, thoroughly, fondly, etc.) from childhood?

Wow. That's a fabulous question. I can't recall any particulars from very early childhood, but something that sticks out to me is that as an adolescent I loved my first Calvin & Hobbes compilations. In fact, I am still entertained by their sharp wit and social commentary.

What are your research or non-academic programming pursuits? You mentioned your interest in smart phone apps.

I'm currently working on methods for robust text recognition. I've applied this to recognizing words in downtown scene images (as in from a smart phone), but I'm currently trying to apply this to historic maps to enable scholars to search them more efficiently.

Do you attempt to market any apps or programs that you write?

I haven't yet. If the right opportunity came along I might consider it, but I'm mostly interested in furthering the frontiers of technology, not the engineering it takes to go the last mile and make a program completely user-friendly.

What is the most interesting application of AI you have worked on (or heard of etc.)?

Well, those are two very different questions. I've very much enjoyed both of my major research threads so far---in stereo vision (3-D reconstruction) and text recognition. They involve learning about all the information and processing that humans use to solve the problem so apparently effortlessly, which is fascinating to me. Other projects I think are cutting-edge are those enabled by the massive amounts of data available on the internet today, such as "Scene Completion using Millions of Photographs".

I would like to know more about the State of Nebraska. Although I grew up in Iowa, I know almost nothing about my western neighbor and have only been in the state once.

Geographically the state is very diverse. While the eastern portion is not all that different from Iowa, central Nebraska is a vast treeless swath called the sandhills, mostly used for grazing cattle. In my opinion, it's quite beautiful, but it takes a certain degree of appreciation. Interstate 80 is the worst way to see the state. I'm from west of the sandhills, where it's high plains. In the northeast corner, bluffs of the Pine Ridge are a beautiful and different landscape as well. (Surprisingly, some of the best mountain biking in the country can be found there!)