Kumar inspires joy and energy as inaugural Milestone Moments speaker

When Swarun Kumar and his high school classmates travelled from India to Mexico to participate in the prestigious International Olympiad in Informatics competition, a professor there asked them to describe their dream job. Kumar’s teammates said they wanted to be Bollywood stars, but the teenage Kumar said, “I want to be you.”

Kumar was not only drawn to the professor’s joyful and creative energy, but he was also attracted to the puzzle solving aspect of his work.

“You get paid to do that,” he marveled.

Kumar was invited to be one of the first presenters in a new series launched by the College of Engineering’s Center for Faculty Success.

I want to be you.

Swarun Kumar’s response to a professor who asked what his dream job would be., Swarun Kumar, Professor, ECE

“The new Milestone Moments series is a way to celebrate, in a personal way, the achievements that have brought a faculty member to the pinnacle of their academic career, “explained Lisa Porter, the associate dean for faculty and graduate affairs.

Kumar was promoted to full professor in July. And while he had no ambitions to be movie star, according to Larry Pileggi, who heads the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), Kumar is a rock star in all things wireless systems.

He is the Sathaye Family Foundation Career Development Professor in ECE, has received numerous awards including an NSF Career Award, a Google Faculty Research Award, and SIGMOBILE's Rock Star Award, which recognizes an individual who has made recent outstanding research or product contributions to the field of mobile computing in the early part of their career.

Pileggi described the work Kumar does as both interesting and unique. “But it’s really about the impact of the work,” said Pileggi. “His group has fun building and making, and it ultimately spills into their research.”

That fun factor was obvious throughout Kumar’s talk and has clearly played a steady and important role in many of the decisions he has made during his productive and impressive career.

Kumar, who said he is very comfortable giving class lectures and research presentations, admitted that sharing such personal revelations was a new kind of challenge for him. But given the favorable response from audience members, many of whom were Ph.D. students, he proved that such a talk could be as entertaining and inspirational as it was instructive.

Kumar earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in his hometown of Madras. When he graduated, nearly every one of his family and friends told him that now he could get a good job and settle down.

His group has fun building and making, and it ultimately spills into their research.

Larry Pileggi, Department Head and Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Kumar wasn’t quite ready to take that advice. He chose to pass on an industry career that promised what he called eye-popping amounts of money to pursue a Ph.D., a path entirely uncommon in his immediate family.

He applied to and was accepted at MIT where he would earn a Ph.D. in computer science. Despite the incredibly rigorous challenges he faced at MIT, he said it was one of the most amazing periods of his life. While there, his research group won MIT’s Elevator Pitch Contest—one of three contests in MIT’s $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, a yearlong series of competitions that allows MIT students and researchers to test their business ideas in a nonacademic setting and rewards the winner with $100,000.

Despite that accomplishment, he again resisted the temptation of entrepreneurial success, opted to bypass post doc appointments, and began applying for positions as a professor. To his surprise, the 25-year-old Kumar was hired by Carnegie Mellon’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

And again, his father told him that he had worked hard, done well, and could now relax and settle down. And again, Kumar opted instead to take on a new challenge. The pathway to full professorship was laid out in a daunting nine-year plan that Kumar suspected was intended to frighten anyone with less than a full commitment to the endeavor.

But endeavor he did. As a new professor, he was surprised by the range of duties, lack of directives, and ultimately the freedom he had to carry out his new job.

He had to decide what to teach, what research to pursue, how to fund it, when to publish it, and how to support and advise the students he was now responsible for. He didn’t hesitate to seek help by reaching out to his new colleagues. He had coffee and conversations with dozens of fellow faculty members.

“Not only did they say yes to my invitations, but they were also super sympathetic, and best of all, they almost always paid for the coffee,” laughed Kumar.

Since then, he has built many strong relationships with fellow professors who inspire him and talented students who he says make him proud. And like the professor he wanted to emulate all those years ago, he is also having great fun—always bringing the same joyful and creative energy to his work.

Along the way, he also heeded his family’s advice by settling down and starting a family. He says that his wife, son, and daughter are truly the best parts of his happy life.