Alfred Z. Spector
Dr. Spector spoke widely on research and innovation, and he devoted much time to helping Google connect to the university research community. He advocated Google’s Hybrid Approach to Research, which is based on
- having a flexible organization that makes technology transfer easier,
- smaller teams which are better able to quickly create, launch and iterate products, and
- a belief that researchers should strive for impact that scales, allowing discoveries to benefit the world through rapid and broad dissemination.
Dr. Spector also spoke widely about “CS+X,” which is short-hand for the argument that the hybridization of computer science with every other discipline (x) would increasingly impact education, research, products, and even societal structures. While he began discussing CS+X in 2004, the exponential progress in CS and the advent of big data has made it an ever more important tenet.
Previously, Dr. Spector was vice president of strategy and technology at IBM’s Software Business, and prior to that, he was vice president of services and software research across IBM. He was also founder and CEO of Transarc Corporation, a pioneer in distributed transaction processing and wide area file systems, and was an associate professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, specializing in highly reliable, highly scalable distributed computing.
Dr. Spector received his Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford and a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics from Harvard. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the IEEE and the ACM. Dr. Spector is also the recipient of the 2001 IEEE Computer Society’s Tsutomu Kanai Award for work in scalable architectures and distributed systems.
Personally, Alfred is married to Rhonda and has 3 children. He plays the piano a bit and runs persistently.
Google Publications
-
Google's Hybrid Approach to Research
Alfred Spector, Peter Norvig, Slav Petrov
Communications of the ACM, vol. 55 Issue 7 (2012), pp. 34-37
-
Why we're able to Google
Proceeding CRASS '09 Computing Research that Changed the World: Reflections and Perspectives, Computing Research Association, Washington, D.C. (2009)
Previous Publications
-
Toward a safer and more secure cyberspace
Herbert S. Lin, Alfred Z. Spector, Peter G. Neumann, Seymour E. Goodman
Communications of the ACM, vol. 50, no. 10 (2007), pp. 128
-
Technical context and cultural consequences of XML
Sharon C. Adler, Roberta Cochrane, John F. Morar, Alfred Z. Spector
IBM Systems Journal, vol. 45 (2006), pp. 207-224
-
Semantic Acceleration Helping Realize the Semantic Web Vision or
International Semantic Web Conference (2005), pp. 4
-
Introduction
Alfred Z. Spector, John Swainson, Daniel Sabbah
IBM Systems Journal, vol. 43, no. 2 (2004)
-
Distributed Systems: Lessons Learned and Challenges Remaining
ISADS (2003), pp. 3
-
The Conundrum of Distributed Computing
ICDCS (2003), pp. 520-
-
Challenges and opportunities in autonomic computing
ICS (2002), pp. 96-96
-
TP is TP Heavy
HPTS (1993), pp. 0-
-
Camelot and Avalon: A Distributed Transaction Facility
Jeffrey L. Eppinger, Lily B. Mummert, Alfred Z. Spector
Morgan Kaufmann (1991)
-
Some Thoughts on Systems Challenges for the 1990s
Operating Systems of the 90s and Beyond (1991), pp. 223-226
-
Modular Architectures for Distributed and Database Systems
PODS (1989), pp. 217-224
-
Camelot: A Flexible Distributed Transaction Processing System
Alfred Z. Spector, Randy F. Pausch, G. Bruell
COMPCON (1988), pp. 432-439
-
A weighted voting algorithm for replicated directories
Joshua J. Bloch, Dean S. Daniels, Alfred Z. Spector
J. ACM, vol. 34 (1987), pp. 859-909
-
Distributed Logging for Transaction Processing
Dean S. Daniels, Alfred Z. Spector, Dean S. Thompson
SIGMOD Conference (1987), pp. 82-96
-
High Performance Distributed Transaction Processing in a General Purpose Computing Environment
Alfred Z. Spector, Jeffrey L. Eppinger, Dean S. Daniels, Richard Draves, Joshua J. Bloch, Dan Duchamp, Randy F. Pausch, Dean S. Thompson
HPTS (1987), pp. 220-242
-
An Algorithm for Replicated Directories
Dean S. Daniels, Alfred Z. Spector
Proceedings of the second annual ACM symposium on Principles of distributed computing (1986), pp. 24-43
-
Communication Support in Operating Systems for Distributed Transactions
Networking in Open Systems (1986), pp. 313-324
-
TABS
Fault-Tolerant Distributed Computing (1986), pp. 115-123
-
The Camelot Project
Alfred Z. Spector, Joshua J. Bloch, Dean S. Daniels, Richard Draves, Dan Duchamp, Jeffrey L. Eppinger, Sherri G. Menees, Dean S. Thompson
IEEE Database Eng. Bull., vol. 9 (1986), pp. 23-34
-
Thoughts on Large Distributed File Systems
GI Jahrestagung (1) (1986), pp. 555-564
-
Distributed Transactions for Reliable Systems
Alfred Z. Spector, Dean S. Daniels, Dan Duchamp, Jeffrey L. Eppinger, Randy F. Pausch
SOSP (1985), pp. 127-146
-
Operating system support for transactions
ACM SIGOPS European Workshop (1985), pp. 23-26
-
Performance Evaluation on Distributed Tansaction Facilities
Alfred Z. Spector, Dean S. Daniels
HPTS (1985), pp. 0-
-
The ITC Distributed File System: Principles and Design
Mahadev Satyanarayanan, John H. Howard, David A. Nichols, Robert N. Sidebotham, Alfred Z. Spector, Michael J. West
SOSP (1985), pp. 35-50
-
The TABS Projects
Database Engineering, vol. 8 (1985), pp. 19-25
-
Case Study: IBM's System/360-370 Architecture
Alfred Z. Spector, David K. Gifford
Communications of the ACM, vol. 30 (1984), pp. 291-307
-
Support for Distributed Transactions in the TABS Prototype
Alfred Z. Spector, Jacob Butcher, Dean S. Daniels, Daniel J. Duchamp, Jeffrey L. Eppinger, Charles E. Fineman, Abdelsalam Heddaya, Peter M. Schwarz
Symposium on Reliability in Distributed Software and Database Systems (1984), pp. 186-206
-
Synchronizing Shared Abstract Types
Peter M. Schwarz, Alfred Z. Spector
ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, vol. 2 (1984), pp. 223-250
-
The Space Shuttle Primary Computer System
David K. Gifford, Alfred Z. Spector
Communications of the ACM, vol. 27 (1984), pp. 872-900
-
The TWA Reservation System
David K. Gifford, Alfred Z. Spector
Communications of the ACM, vol. 27 (1984), pp. 649-665
-
An Algorithm for Replicated Directories
Dean S. Daniels, Alfred Z. Spector
PODC (1983), pp. 104-113
-
Transactions: A Construct for Reliable Distributed Computing
Alfred Z. Spector, Peter M. Schwarz
ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review, vol. 17 (1983), pp. 18-35
-
Performing Remote Operations Efficiently on a Local Computer Network
Communications of the ACM, vol. 25 (1982), pp. 246-260
-
Extending Local Network Interfaces to Provide More Efficient Interprocessor Communication Facilities
ACM Pacific (1980), pp. 6-13


