Alumni profile
Lucky Vidmar (CompSci'94; M'97) is working to empower ethics-focused engineers and honor his friend and mentor through the Moulakis Lecture Series within the Herbst Program for Engineering, Ethics & Society.
I grew up in Denver (a Regis High grad) and started computer science in 1968 as an undergrad at Johns Hopkins. By way of context, Hopkins and Baltimore taught me as much about life as computer science. The East Coast was filled with demonstrations
Why did you choose to study computer science? I starting programming when I was 9 and started my first software business when I was 13. I knew pretty early in life that I was going to study computer science. Who had a strong effect on your
Why did you choose to study computer science? As an undergrad, I didn’t initially care for computer science. This was partially due to primitive technology (e.g., programming on cards and slow mainframes), but mostly due to my not seeing a
Who or what had a strong effect on your interest/trajectory in computer science? My father worked in an early data center with large mainframe computers, so I had a lifelong familiarity with computing. My interest was further formed by my high
Tell us about your career path. I started out studying mechanical and aerospace engineering. For my PhD, I switched to computer science to follow an interest in robotics and computer vision. Part way through that program, I was fortunate to start a
Why did you choose to study computer science? I chose CU Boulder because of its strong reputation in telecommunications. I have always had a passion in technology and received a bachelor’s degree in Arts & Science from the University of Nebraska
Why did you choose to study computer science? I actually started at CU with an emphasis in art. After a couple of semesters, however, I realized that the art coursework felt like "work," and I was spending all of my spare time writing software. It
Who or what had a strong effect on your interest or trajectory in computer science? When I was about 8 years old, my father brought home a Commodore 64 personal computer. After booting it up and writing my first couple of programs from the
Tell us about your career path. I started my career at the NSA both during and after working on my degree. Next, I worked for Britannica.com – building website traffic analyzers for them. In 2003, the phenomenon that we now call “