Tony Zhou
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Hi everyone! My name is Tony Zhou, and I am a Longitude Fellow from Yale University. Today, I have the pleasure of presenting part 2 of my interview with Naeem Altaf. Naeem is an IBM Distinguished Engineer and the Chief Technology Officer of IBM Space Tech and IBM Cloud. We continue our conversation with Naeem sharing unexpected surprises throughout the project, and his thoughts on leadership and mentorship.

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Naeem Altaf
We have a very good mentor program in IBM. We have this thing called IBM Academy. Basically, what Academy is, the people who like to do innovation work, they come and they showcase their work to the whole IBM. You can go and create initiatives and people join those initiatives, they get interested. In IBM, the space part has almost literally been dead for last 15 years, because they’re focused something else now. So I tried to reignite it last year. Oh, because IBM played a huge role in putting men on moon. At that time, IBM was the one with the computers and everything, and IBM dedicated 4000 engineers to NASA for those years, just to go and make the Apollo mission successful. So we have a legacy, we have a huge history there. So I’m trying to reignite that, to speak about it and inspire people and give them information. My personal focus has always been innovation, what we can do.

Tony
Yeah, that’s really inspiring. Who would you say have been some of your mentors or people who have influenced you along your path?

Naeem
You need to have mentors, always. Because they’re your guide in front and they help you navigate, especially when you’re working in bigger companies who have- we used to have like 400,000 people, right? You can easily get lost in this big company. The first few years, you have no idea. Just go to work, do your thing, come home excited about the paycheck. That’s it, right. But they were the ones who showed that this can be done, basically the art of possibility. What is the art of possibility? This, this, this, you can do all these things. They give you these things, and then it’s up to you if you want to take that opportunity and go. It’s very simple. As a parent also, let’s say you have three, four kids, right? Every day you tell them these things. Two or three of them just listen and say “that’s really cool.” One of them comes back and says you know what, tell me more, I am interested, and all this stuff. Then you pay more attention, because this kid is hungry to do something. Same thing in a profession. So they will show you, but then you also have to put a lot of effort in. I remember I used to come back home at like two or three o’clock in the morning. And then next day, I’m back at work at seven o’clock, eight o’clock. It’s not like you get overtime pay or something. It’s just like, you’re curious, you want to learn this stuff. All because you don’t know, and somebody at a high level is like, I’ll show you this stuff. You want to be respectful and learn from them. And the knowledge only comes from respect. This is a saying of the East, which the West does not understand. But in our part of the world, Pakistan or China, you have to respect your teacher.

Tony
Absolutely. I used to study music prior to switching to study data science. One of my mentors, professors, created this analogy, or this image, about how your relationship with your mentor is a lot like rowing a boat. Both of you need to be rowing, right? Not only one person could be rowing, because if one person rows, then you’re just going in circles. But both of you need to be rowing together. And I totally agree. It’s about mutual respect, respecting the other person’s time, respecting the other person’s efforts and knowledge and wisdom, but then also at the same time, it’s this back and forth, right. And I think especially when we’re young as students, we think that we are just receiving information from our teacher. But that’s absolutely not true. I think it’s also about how you’re returning, because the mentor also gets enjoyment or fulfillment from inspiring you.

Naeem
And there’s lots of things, for example, what you’re doing in your age group right now, they were not there when I was there, 20 years ago. So I have a lot to learn from you also. The basic point is learning. As long as you’re in that learning mode, you will keep on going up. The moment you think, you know what, I know it all, you will stop. I mean, it’s not complicated.

Tony
That’s awesome. If you had to redo things again, would you start differently? Or would computer science still be that choice?

Naeem
I would like to be closer to the people, whatever the work I do, which takes me closer to the people. I have three daughters. I told them, I don’t want you to be in the tech industry. I want it to be the industry where you actually touch a human. And one of those industries is healthcare. There is plenty of stuff here for us. Of course, there is no end to the greed. At a certain level you reach you’re lucky, enough is enough. I mean, what else? How many gadgets are you gonna buy? They are just gonna sit there, just wasting, right? But the thing is, when you go and help some human, the amount of satisfaction you get in your heart, that is priceless. No money can buy that.

Tony
But don’t you think with tech, though, you’re able to pull in mass, like at scale? A lot of?

Naeem
Indirectly. Yes, you’re right. You do. But in general you do things, and it helps people. But when you go and you help some elderly people, you do something that- you help them somewhat, right, that’s instant, like, you see their smile. So I see that in healthcare, because people who come to hospitals are in pain. When you help them, and when you see the smile, and when they give something, when they say something to you, that is totally priceless.

Tony
Talking about healthcare now, and medicine. As you mentioned, there was DNA sequencing up in space, I’m assuming that is to explore and research microbes or other things in space. How do you envision that step, or the steps we need to take for humans or medicine to be in space?

Naeem
That is a very, very, very critical thing. So for example, they’re talking about Artemis going to the moon and staying over there for, you know, just trying to stay there. And then eventually to Mars. We’re going to spend billions of dollars to do that. Okay, so let’s say we spent, I don’t know, several hundreds of billions, and we sent four or five people. And the moment they arrive there, a day or two later, that they die. You’re like, okay, what then now, right? You spent all this money to put humans and they could not survive the environment for whatever reason. If you can’t protect your payload, basically your mission is failed. That’s your payload, which you’re putting. So you have … I mean, you put up any fancy stuff in the orbit, and the moment you put in the orbit it just stops working. It’s a failure, big failure. So yeah, so healthcare is a big concern, the health of the astronaut. So there’s lots of work going on where you’re putting a lot of biosensors on them and checking for why does all this happen. But DNA sequencing tells almost everything about that living being. You can detect so much stuff. So that- our focus was edge computing. What happens with DNA sequencing today, when they do this DNA sequencing, run through this stuff, it generates like a half a terabyte of data. Now that data has to come back to the ground, which will take a lot of time, it will eat up a lot of bandwidth. And then it has to go through the companies who just like to know all that stuff. And then into the hands of scientists, by the time it gets to the hands of scientists it is already like two months late. Who knows the environment, right? If we can do that computation right there for you, that you can get your results because the value of that data, the window of opportunity is very small. If you miss that window, I gave you data and you look it after five days, it’s almost useless now. You should have looked at it right then. Let’s say you’re on the moon. Now you take the samples and you wait for when the next flight will come, we will send the samples back. That can be months. And if you are at Mars that can be years. So the idea was okay, while you’re doing your research at that spot, I need the answer right there. So that was the whole idea of that. I mean, DNA has done amazing things for us in this century.

Tony
Would you want to go into space?

Naeem
Yeah, definitely, would love to go to space. Every night when I go to sleep and- because you see dreams, right? I mean, I see lots of dreams. It’s amazing when you are seeing, watching a dream because it feels so real. I always pray you know, please give me a ride in the space, oh Lord, right? You can do anything!

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Tony
The Edge of Space series serves as an opportunity for its listeners to learn more about the exciting innovations in space. In part two of this 2-part interview, we hear how important mentorship is at IBM. As Naeem said, mentorships are mutually beneficial for the mentor and mentee. Mentors can guide and help navigate the complexities of a big company. They offer a wealth of knowledge and can bring clarity to your vision. Most of all, they can show you what is possible. Seeking mentorship is a long, but rewarding process, so I hope our listeners put themselves out there this new year to form meaningful mentorships.

We hope you enjoyed today’s segment. Please feel free to share your thoughts over social media and in the comments, or write to us at podcast@longitude.site. We would love to hear from you.

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