Meet Prof. Wloka!
- Email:
cwloka@hmc.edu
My Path to Claremont
Tl;dr version: I grew up in a small town in western Canada, moved around a bit during middle and high school, and ended up in Toronto for university. I did my undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto, and my graduate studies at York University (also located in Toronto), finishing my PhD in computer science in 2019. After a pandemic-extended post-doc with my PhD supervisor, I came to Mudd in 2021.
Rambling version: I grew up on a farm in Creston, a very small town in British Columbia, Canada, just north of the Idaho border. In terms of human activities, there is not a lot going on in Creston (Creston pretty much has three industries: farming, beer brewing, and retirement homes), but I did get to explore nature a lot, and spent a lot of time doing farm chores like picking and sorting fruits and vegetables. At age two, I announced that I was going to be a paleontologist, and that was my singular career goal for the next decade.
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Wloka Farms fruit stand in Creston, BC. Picture taken August, 2017.
When I was in middle school I moved to another small town, but this time in rural Pennsylvania. The reason for this move was beer. In addition to farming, my dad also worked for the Columbia Brewery in Creston, but (aside from craft beers), beer manufacturing is largely dominated by layer upon layer of multinational corporations. The Columbia Brewery is owned by Labatts Canada (who were in turn owned by the Belgian company Interbrew; this will be important later). Labatts Canada also owned Labatts USA, who owned and operated the Rolling Rock Brewery in Latrobe Pennsylvania. During the years I spent in Pennsylvania, I came to a realization that as much as I was interested in dinosaurs, I didn’t really enjoy the idea of searching hot, dusty deserts for fossils (too much like picking onions in hot, dusty farm fields), and so I decided that maybe paleontology wasn’t the only possible career path for me. Somewhat bereft of a path, I decided maybe an astronaut was the way to go.
After four years in PA, the international nature of beer once again became a factor. This time my dad was offered a position in Russia (Interbrew owned nine breweries in Russia), so off we went to Moscow. As I finished up high school, I realized I was too tall and my eyesight was too poor for the physical requirements of an astronaut, so right at the time that I was applying for university I had the least idea what I wanted to do. I ended up deciding that if I couldn’t be an astronaut, maybe I could design and build the things that sent stuff to space, and I ended up in an aerospace engineering program at the University of Toronto (U of T). This was my first exposure to computer programming.
I did an industrial internship after my third year, right in the middle of one of the major aerospace recessions. With jobs actually related to aerospace engineering few and far between, I ended up taking a position at an automation company, and spent the year working almost exclusively on machine vision systems. It was a fascinating challenge, and during that year I realized that out of the courses I had taken up to that point, the ones I had by far enjoyed the most were all related to computing and robotics (and I was really not looking forward to any more courses on the structural analysis of airplane wings). I also realized that one of the aspects I found most interesting about machine vision work was the challenge of trying to figure out how my vision worked and then replicating that on a computer. Consequently, after my internship I transferred out of engineering and into a computational neuroscience program to study both computational and biological models of intelligence.
I considered staying at U of T for grad school, but I ended up deciding on York University instead due to the interdisciplinarity of the program there. I completed both my Masters and PhD at York. I actually ended up getting hired at Harvey Mudd more than once; the first offer had to be rescinded when the US-Canada border closed due to the pandemic. Luckily for me, I was able to apply for the position (and this time actually get to accept it) again for Fall 2021.
My Computer-Science Interests
My interest in computer science has been largely driven by my interest in artificial intelligence, but I also really enjoy the puzzle-like nature of theoretical computer science.
My Hobbies and Things I do for Fun
I enjoy reading, writing, and storytelling. I often find that my science brain works better if I carve out time in my schedule for either reading or writing just for fun. I try to fit in time for tabletop roleplaying games, but that can sometimes get a little challenging during the semester.
I also enjoy the creative aspects of image processing. I am very much an amateur artist, but I enjoy experimenting with digital art on both my computer and iPad.
What I'm Most Excited About This Semester
This year will be my first year as a tenure-track faculty member (I was a visitor for the past two years), which is quite exciting. It means that I will have some additional responsibilities, and there will be a lot of new challenges and opportunities (for example, I will be working with the College on improving our computing infrastructure, particularly with respect to high performance and GPU computing). Some of this work has actually already taken place over the summer (with a focus on maintaining and upgrading the machinery we already have, including the CS70 lab machines), so I'm excited to test this out!
What I'm Most Nervous About This Semester
This semester in addition to teaching the morning section of CS70, I'll also be co-teaching CS81 for the first time. Teaching a new course is always a bit daunting!
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