Interview with Chai Wah Wu

Featured Engineer

Chai Wah Wu

Chai Wah Wu - IBM T. J. Watson Research Staff Member

What are your favorite hardware tools that you use?

Since I mainly write code nowadays, my favorite hardware tools (beside the computer) tend to be paper and pen, but sometimes I also use a pencil.

What are your favorite software tools that you use?

Mostly scripting languages such as Matlab and Python. Other tools include Photoshop, Latex, Word, Excel and Firefox.

What is on your bookshelf?

Books on image processing, graph theory, linear algebra and programming languages. For leisure I tend to read the classics on my Kindle.

Do you have any note-worthy engineering experiences? (blowing up things, getting shocked, etc.)

Two experiences stuck to my mind. The first one is when I was a young boy I read about electromagnets and how you can make one by winding a wire around a bolt and connecting the wire to a battery. My first attempt didn’t work so well as I have a short length of wire so I thought that I can get a stronger magnetic field by plugging the wires into an AC outlet (!). Of course this blew a fuse in our house (at that time we still have fuses in the house). The second experience occurred during a major international conference where I am supposed to demo a chaotic communication system. I have tested all the pieces before, but when the time came to run the demo, I would start up the system, and nothing would happen. It took me many stressful moments to realize that the power switch on the module containing the chaotic circuit was turned off. The circuit contains an active element and is battery operated. In order to conserve power, I turned the power off minutes before the demo, but forgot about it. Since then, I always checked the power plug whenever something goes wrong.

What are you currently working on?

I currently lead a project developing halftoning solutions for high speed digital printers. I also manage a team of researchers developing novel solutions for energy management and transportation management.

What challenges do you foresee in your industry?

As all aspects of life become embedded with sensors and actuators, the immense amount of communication and data processing required necessitates new platforms and architectures. One example of this is the proliferation of smartphones that can acquire and generate all forms of data (GPS, acceleration, magnetic bearing, multimedia, SMS, e-commerce transactions, etc.).

When did you decide to become an engineer?

When I was little we lived with our uncle who makes a living installing electrical wiring in homes and fixing radios and TVs. This planted the idea in me that science and engineering is something I want to do. When I was 13 years old I got my first computer, a Commodore VIC-20, and that event sealed my fate. My brother and I had so much fun writing programs in Basic (I first learned about POKE in Basic long before Facebook made this term popular), Forth and 6502 Assembly that when the time came to choose a major for my university studies, I unequivocally chose computer engineering.

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