Interview with Professor Feng Wang

Interviewee: Professor Feng Wang (Associate Professor of Applied Computing at ASU West)

What do you like best/worst about being a professor? 

(Best):

The best part of being a professor is the impact I can have as part of the three components. One is teaching, one is research, and one is service. For teaching, I do have some flexibility of choosing what course I teach based on my expertise and my interest. For my research, I have complete flexibility to choose what topic or problem that interests me. For service, I sometimes choose professional services. The impact of being a professor can be significant. When you are a student a good professor can inspire you, a bad professor can make you stop dreaming about things and believing in yourself. Sometimes you make a mistake and sometimes you learn from those mistakes. One of the research I am doing right now is a real time Flu Civilian system. Basically what we do is collect flu tweets with the key words that would be found in those tweets. We analyze those tweets and see which of those tweets are associated with real flu cases and we geotag those tweets.

*Professor Feng Wang also discussed her research in the Internet of Things and security regarding user privacy and noting the freedom that research provides.*

(Worst):

I think the worst aspect is when I’m passionate about teaching and I think my students will benefit from what is [taught], but [sometimes] they don’t even care. That is what puzzles me the most. Sometimes I do feel frustrated about it and I think “this is important for you and you don’t even care about your future, you just live in the moment and want to play games.” I cannot say those are the excuses, but I tell those students you need to re-prioritize. Those are the [cases] that frustrate me the most. They are often occupied by other things and don’t think about what the future is like.

Why did you decide to enter your field?

When I was in high school [Computer Science] was cool and new. It is a major that gives good pay. I didn’t know what I was going to do so I chose the [major] that was the most providing at the time. I’m glad I chose the right career as it is becoming more and more popular. I can choose to do research that will have an impact, a direct impact on peoples’ lives.

What is the most surprising thing about your field to you?

I think the surprising things are how technology can eat our time and have a negative impact. At some point in my career, with the Flu Civilian System, I needed to collect those tweets and I can know who tweeted them out. It allows us to connect more easily, but on the other side it [causes] us to give up our privacy because it’s online. That was a movement I was puzzled by, poking into other peoples’ privacy (in regard to technology industry). I need to think of how I can avoid doing that [when developing].