Academic careers are often demanding in terms of both time and mental energy. It can be difficult to juggle work, family, and personal time. In this talk, I will share my experiences balancing the various demands on my time and some strategies I’ve found useful. Two key lessons are 1) to consciously identify your priorities so you can make decisions consistent with what you want and 2) accept that balance is something you have to constantly work on.

Bio: Kathleen Fisher is a Professor in and the Chair of the Computer Science Department at Tufts. Previously, she was a program manager at DARPA where she started and managed the HACMS and PPAML programs, a Consulting Faculty Member in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University, and a Principal Member of the Technical Staff at AT&T Labs Research. Kathleen’s research focuses on advancing the theory and practice of programming languages and on applying ideas from the programming language community to the problem of ad hoc data management. The main thrust of her work has been in domain-specific languages to facilitate programming with massive amounts of ad hoc data. Recently, she has been exploring synergies between machine learning and programming languages and studying how to apply advances in programming languages to the problem of building more secure systems.

Kathleen is an ACM Fellow. She has served as Program Chair for OOPSLA ICFP, CUFP, and FOOL, and as General Chair for ICFP 2015. She is an Associate Editor for TOPLAS and a former editor of the Journal of Functional Programming. Kathleen is a past Chair of the ACM Special Interest Group in Programming Languages (SIGPLAN) and past Co-Chair of CRA’s Committee on the Status of Women (CRA-W). Kathleen is a recipient of the SIGPLAN Distinguished Service Award. She is Vice Chair of DARPA’s ISAT Study Group and a member of the Board of Trustees of Harvey Mudd College.