Impacting the future one failure at a time

Zoom link for remote participants

Professor of Engineering Practice Candidate Seminar

Abstract:  Turning ideas into products is a process that requires perseverance and comfort with serendipity, even in the best of times. Some of the best ideas may never successfully translate, and initially discarded ones may suddenly become gold. The first part of this talk will describe some of the speaker’s experiences attempting this alchemy in various roles at ARM and in a cloud computing startup. The rest of the talk will gaze into a crystal ball, discuss some exciting areas for innovation, and offer ideas on what to do about them. The talk will conclude with some observations about structural changes in the computer industry that could motivate new approaches for universities to compete in the marketplace of ideas.

Bio: Krisztian Flautner was most recently responsible for product strategy in Cisco’s Emerging Technology & Incubation Group after being CEO of Banzai Cloud, a startup acquired by Cisco that turned Cloud Native dreams into enterprise reality through cloud software. Previously, he was general manager of the Internet of Things business unit and VP of research and development at ARM. He received a Ph.D. in computer science and engineering and several other degrees from the University of Michigan. Flautner co-authored over 80 publications and received various best paper awards, the 2017 ISCA influential paper award for groundbreaking research in power-efficient computing, and the 2021 MICRO Test of Time award.