Alfred Spector

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American computer scientist and research manager

title: "Alfred Spector" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["american-computer-scientists", "stanford-university-school-of-engineering-alumni", "google-employees", "fellows-of-the-association-for-computing-machinery", "living-people", "carnegie-mellon-university-faculty", "harvard-john-a.-paulson-school-of-engineering-and-applied-sciences-alumni", "ibm-research-computer-scientists", "ibm-employees", "american-chief-technology-officers", "1954-births", "jewish-american-academics"] description: "American computer scientist and research manager" topic_path: "engineering" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Spector" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary American computer scientist and research manager ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox scientist"]

FieldValue
nameAlfred Z. Spector
imageHeadshot of Alfred Spector.jpg
birth_date
death_date
resting_place_coordinates
workplacesMIT
Two Sigma Investments
Google
IBM
Transarc Corporation
Carnegie Mellon University
alma_materHarvard University
Stanford University
thesis_titleMultiprocessing Architectures for Local Area Networks
thesis_urlhttp://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=910219
thesis_year1981
doctoral_advisor
known_forOpportunities and Perils in Data Science
Google's Hybrid Approach to Research
CS+X
Research on Reliable Distributed Computing
Andrew File System (AFS)
awardsΦΒΚ Scholar (2018-19)
ACM Software Systems Award (2016)
American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2009)
National Academy of Engineering (2004)
IEEE Kanai Award for Distributed Computing (2001)
Hertz Fellow (1977)
spouse
partner
signature
website
::

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Alfred Zalmon Spector (born October 14, 1954) is an American computer scientist and research manager. He is a Professor of Practice in the MIT EECS Department and was previously CTO of Two Sigma Investments. Before that, he was Vice President of Research and Special Initiatives at Google.

Education

Spector received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University, and his PhD in computer science from Stanford University in 1981. His research explored communication architectures for building multiprocessors out of network-linked computers and included measurements of remote procedure call operations on experimental Ethernet. His dissertation was titled Multiprocessing Architectures for Local Computer Networks, and his advisor was Forest Baskett III.

Career

Spector was an associate professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). While there, he served as doctoral advisor to Randy Pausch, Jeff Eppinger and Joshua Bloch and seven others. Spector was a founder of Transarc Corporation in 1989 which built and sold distributed transaction processing and wide area file systems software, commercializing the Andrew File System developed at CMU. After Transarc was acquired by IBM, he became a software executive and then vice president of global software and services research for IBM and finally vice president of strategy and technology within IBM's Software Group.

Spector joined Google as vice president of research in November 2007 and retired in early 2015. In October 2015 he was hired by technology-driven hedge fund Two Sigma Investments to serve as the CTO, which he did until mid-2020.

Advisory committees

Spector is involved with academic computer science and has served on numerous advisory committees, including chairing the NSF CISE Advisory Committee from 2004–2005; various university advisory committees including at City College of New York, Carnegie Mellon University, Harvard, Rice University and Stanford. He has served on the National Academy Computer Science and Telecommunication Board from 2006 to 2013 and chaired the Computer Science and Engineering Section of the National Academy of Engineering.

Speaking/writing

Spector has written and spoken on diverse topics related to computer science and engineering. In 2004, he described the expanding sphere of Computer Science and proposed the need to infuse computer science into all disciplines using the phrase CS+X. He and his co-authors Peter Norvig and Slav Petrov proposed a model for computer science research in industry, based on their experience at Google in their paper, Google’s Hybrid Approach to Research. Since 2016 Spector advocated for a balanced and critical perspective on data science, and in the presentation Opportunities and Perils in Data Science, he argued for a trans-disciplinary study of data science that includes the humanities and social sciences. As a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar in the 2018–19 academic year, Spector has presented these positions at various universities around the United States.

Awards and recognition

In 2001, Spector received the IEEE Computer Society's Tsutomu Kanai Award for his contributions to distributed computing systems and applications. He and other researchers at Carnegie Mellon University won the 2016 ACM Software systems Award for developing the Andrew File System (AFS). He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2004. He was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery in 2006 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009, and serves on its council.

Alfred appears in the Institutional Investor 2017 Tech 40 and was a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar during the 2018–19 academic year.

References

References

  1. "Alfred Spector".
  2. "Alfred Spector - The Mathematics Genealogy Project".
  3. Spector, Alfred Z.. (1982-04-01). "Performing Remote Operations Efficiently on a Local Computer Network". Commun. ACM.
  4. "Alfred Z. Spector - Research at Google".
  5. (2019-08-06). "Transarc Corporation".
  6. "Global Conference 2017 Speaker: Alfred Spector".
  7. (2013-03-22). "Alfred Spector".
  8. (2001-06-18). "IBM Research - Alfred Z Spector".
  9. Benoit, Knútr. (2017-05-14). "Alfred Spector". Dict.
  10. (2015-10-01). "Two Sigma Poaches Google's Alfred Spector". ValueWalk.
  11. (October 2015). "Two Sigma Poaches Google's Alfred Spector". Value Walk.
  12. (2015-10-01). "Two Sigma Hires Google's Spector as Chief Technology Officer". Bloomberg.com.
  13. (2020-06-11). "Two Sigma hires chief data officer from Goldman Sachs". TheTradeNews.com.
  14. (2005-09-01). "Issues for the CISE Community in the New Academic Year". CRN.
  15. "Distinguished Lecture Series on Computation and Society". Harvard Engineering and Applied Sciences.
  16. "Taking Computing+Data Wide Across the Curriculum: The Illinois CS+X and MCS-DS Degree Programs". Rutenbar.
  17. "Research at Google". Alfred Z. Spector: Research at Google.
  18. "AZS Harvard CRCS Excerpts 2004.pdf". Google Docs.
  19. (2012-01-01). "Google's Hybrid Approach to Research". Communications of the ACM.
  20. (2017-04-29). "Opportunities and Perils". Alfred Spector - Publications and Musings.
  21. "Data Science Day at Columbia 2017".
  22. Morrow-Spitzer, Jacob. (23 April 2019). "ΦΒΚ Visiting Scholar Alfred Spector".
  23. "Distinguished Lecture Series: Computer Science The Ever-Expanding Sphere - 56915".
  24. (2017-05-04). "Former CRA Board Member Receives 2016 ACM Software System Award". CRA.
  25. (2015-12-21). "Dr. Alfred Zalmon Spector". IT History Society.
  26. "Board, Council, and Trust - American Academy of Arts & Sciences".
  27. "The 2017 Tech 40: Alfred Spector".
  28. "The Phi Beta Kappa Society Selects 15 Visiting Scholars for 2018-2019".

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american-computer-scientistsstanford-university-school-of-engineering-alumnigoogle-employeesfellows-of-the-association-for-computing-machineryliving-peoplecarnegie-mellon-university-facultyharvard-john-a.-paulson-school-of-engineering-and-applied-sciences-alumniibm-research-computer-scientistsibm-employeesamerican-chief-technology-officers1954-birthsjewish-american-academics