Echo

Talking with Lecturers: Gernot Heiser

Subrat and Shane chat to the lecturer of the infamous Advanced Operating Systems course at UNSW, ✨ Gernot Heiser ✨! In an episode packed with brain 🧠 bending topics, they dive into not just lecturing, but also his decorated research career, as Gernot discusses:

• Being the FIRST team in the world 🌏 to formally prove the security 🔒 of an operating system - seL4
• How seL4 has been used in autonomous cars 🚗, helicopters 🚁 and iPhones 📱
• The mistakes made 😞 and lessons learnt 💪 from building a startup

Timestamps

1:00 Getting into Operating Systems
15:49 Importance of OS
23:09 Industry vs academia
29:40 Microkernels and working with Qualcomm
41:42 Starting OpenKernelLabs
49:06 Developing and using seL4 - the world’s first formally verified operating system
1:23:19 Creating and lecturing the Advanced Operating Systems course
1:35:40 Interests, hobbies, and food
1:40:30 Reflection on failures and learnings, and advice for students

Pride in Computer Science: LGBTQ+ Roundtable

To mark the end of Pride Month 🏳️‍🌈,  we’ve gathered LGBTQ+ computer scientists and software engineers to celebrate 🥳 and have an unfiltered discussion about what it means to be queer in the computer science field!

Angeni and Fiona sit down with ✨ Alex Hope (Security Engineer @ Atlassian), ✨ Emma Krantz (Lead Software Engineer @ Data61), ✨ Blake Morris (Student @ UNSW), and ✨ Aaron Quigley (CSE Head of School @ UNSW) to unpack their diverse experiences, and discuss:

• Coming out and choosing to be out 🌈
• Navigating both overt hostility and subtle discrimination 🤔
• What workplaces and universities can do to be inclusive 🤗, and
• Which video game 🎮 ?? sparked the moment of realisation 🙊

AND for the very first time, this podcast is also available as video!! See the video here https://youtu.be/yjhXxX27jd0

 

Timestamps

02:30 Computer Science culture and the LGBTQ+ community
12:57 Coming out
23:40 Creating change
52:45 Being out at work and uni
1:00:45 Dealing with discrimination
1:20:25 How can people be good allies?
1:24:25 Advice

Stories from a Stranded International Student w/ Kaiqi Liang

Ever wondered why you’ve never seen CSESoc’s Arc Delegate in person 🤔?? Kai is one of thousands of international students currently stranded in another country as COVID 🦠 has wrecked all plans of overseas travel ✈️🚫.

Ryan and Angeni have an honest conversation with Kai about current life as an international student, spilling the tea ☕️ on everything including:

  😔 What it feels like to be away from friends for such a long time,  
  🏫 How he still stays involved with societies and uni culture, and
  🎮 Which online game he never 🙅 wants to play again

Timestamps

01:12 How Kai was stranded overseas
04:14 Life in Australia (before COVID)
09:36 Life in China now
15:05 Studying online
16:51 Being involved in uni societies
33:02 Internships and interviews online
39:38 Tutoring online
49:35 Balancing responsibilities
55:11 Kai’s final advice

Personal Project Showcase w/ Jason Yu

What does it take to get your personal project to the next level and turn it into a startup?

Sunny and Rosanna talk to recent Peter Farrell Cup runner-up ✨Jason Yu✨, who has done just that with his startup VidUp AI. He tells us:

• What technologies he uses to turn text into AI-generated videos,
• Why it’s so important to keep in close contact with your users, and
• How COVID actually helped his project come to life!

Check out VidUp for yourself here! https://www.vidup.ai/

Timestamps

2:16 What is VidUp?
5:04 Role at the startup
6:38 Where did the idea come from?
8:47 How did you get it started?
18:12 What tools and tech do you use?
35:28 Advice
48:53 Future plans

Personal Project Showcase w/ Alli Murray

Ever started a massive project only to get stuck, feel intimidated and give up? Can you develop your skills with smaller, less complicated projects instead?

In this Personal Projects Showcase, Angeni and Julian talk to 2018 CSESoc Co-Pres, ex-Google intern and current Canva graduate Alli Murray. She tells us:

• Why smaller projects can be more useful than ambitious ones
• How she uses projects to learn new programming languages and technology 
• The difference between internship projects and personal projects
• Why her favourite personal project was a Perl program??

Timestamps

04:30 Why start a personal project?
10:44 How to approach self-learning
13:54 A Peer Mentor-Mentee allocation program
17:53 Internship projects vs personal projects
23:10 Coming up with ideas
24:44 Learning at uni vs self-learning
37:23 Future plans
39:08 Advice
41:24 Navigating degree changes

 

Startups, Pitching and More w/ Beste Onay

Ever thought about joining a startup? Or even better, founding one of your own?

Raathan and Joyce ask Beste Onay, UNSW Founders Program Manager, for her tips and tricks on what it takes to turn your idea into a business, craft the perfect pitch, and run a successful startup!

Timestamps

00:34 Intro to UNSW Founders
02:01 Personal experience with Founders
03:14 What makes a successful startup?
06:27 What makes a good pitch?
16:40 Why should students join a startup?
23:18 Advice for starting a business

Talking with Lecturers: Hayden Smith

What goes into lecturing some of CSE's biggest courses? While also co-founding a startup on the side?

Raathan and Sunny get unprecedented insights from UNSW lecturer Hayden Smith as they get a firsthand account of his journey from high school in rural NSW to leading the record-breaking Sunswift team at uni, and now lecturing while working on his own company!

0:00:49 Getting into computer programming
0:07:13 Time at uni
0:21:30 Working at Microsoft
0:39:53 Co-founding a startup
1:13:39 Lecturing at UNSW
1:52:45 Managing time
1:55:04 Advice for listeners

Personal Project Showcase w/ Selina Chua

How did Selina help build an augmented reality education app that landed 2nd place at the 2020 CSESoc Hackathon AND come 1st place in her very first hackathon ever?

Angeni and Julian chat with Selina to answer these questions and more in the latest Personal Projects Showcase! With hackathons being more collaborative than your average personal project, she tells us how she gets stuff done with her team under high pressure situations, learns new concepts in short timeframes, and most importantly - her tips for any students curious to try their own!

Timestamps
00:00 Intro
03:30 CSESoc Hackathon: building an AR education app
11:27 Building the frontend
24:30 Managing time in a hackathon
31:34 Main takeaways from undertaking the project
33:35 Freelancer Hackathon
39:37 Advice for students jumping into a hackathon
42:23 Building skills from each hackathon
46:10 Future plans!

 

How I Hack Tony Abbott and Atlassian w/ Alex Hope

For this Industry Podcast we’re talking to Alex Hope, a Red Team Security Engineer at Atlassian! Alex had no idea they would go into cybersecurity while at uni, but has gone on to be behind some infamous hacks, including Operation Luigi and finding Tony Abbott’s passport number.

In this chat, they introduce us to the exciting world of hacking that’s more accessible than you think, as we find out what they do on the job, how they got into the industry (and how you can too!), and what happened after the world found out about the Tony Abbott hack.

Check out links to Alex's blog on the CSESoc Media website: media.csesoc.org.au/alex-atlassian/

2:04 - The journey into cyber security
10:43 - Advice for students wanting to get into cyber security
13:00 - A tangent about lock-picking
14:38 - Working in cyber security at Atlassian
47:46 - Hacking Tony Abbott
67:17 - Alex's second favourite hack
69:47 - Wi-Fi hacking
78:05 - Hacking and blogging about it
88:32 - Bonus content :)

Talking with Lecturers: Marc Chee

In this Echo episode Raathan and Sunny sit down with COMP1511 lecturer/Tik Tok celebrity/CSE BNOC Marc Chee! They discuss whether computing and teaching was something Marc always wanted to get into, Marc’s opinions on how CSE has been taught at UNSW has changed over the years, whether COMP courses should have a stronger emphasis on soft skills, whether all CSE students fall into the anti-social geek stereotype, and more!

Timestamps:
0:46 Was CSE something you always wanted to get into?
7:55 Are all CSE students anti-social geeks?
18:42 Handwriting vs Typing
27:42 American, Japanese, and European Games
32:50 Tech Corporations: Making profit vs making the world a better place
42:03 How different is CSE taught today compared to when you were in uni?
53:30 Marc gushing over CSE Tutors and general COMP1511 discussion
77:55 Was teaching something you always wanted to do?
86:40 Internships
89:17 Do you think COMP courses should focus more on soft skills?
100:39 What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?