Faces on Campus – Dr. Ian Gorton
Dr. Ian Gorton joined Northeastern University – Seattle in 2015 as the Director of the Computer Science. Prior to this role, he worked at the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute as a Senior Member of the Technical Staff. He worked on several projects focused on the principles of designing software architectures for big data applications, building knowledge bases, and using machine learning to support engineering tasks.
Dr. Gorton has a PhD in Computer Science from Sheffield Hallam University and is a Senior Member of the IEEE Computer Society and a Fellow of the Australian Computer Society. Until July 2006, he led the software architecture R&D at National ICT Australia (NICTA) in Sydney, Australia, and previously worked at CSIRO, IBM, Microsoft and in academia in Australia. His passion is analyzing and designing complex, high performance distributed systems, and embodying design and architecture principles in methods and tools that can be exploited by architects in other projects.
Dr. Gorton is widely cited for his work in software architecture, performance modelling, and big data systems.
We caught up with Dr. Gorton to gain insight into the inspiration behind his entertaining commencement speech and to check if he had any final words of advice to impart upon our graduates before they take their next steps.
Your commencement speech included some hilarious and insightful anecdotes about the trials & tribulations of finding the right job for you. It received a very positive reaction from the crowd. What was the inspiration for your speech?
Choosing the right job is always a difficult task, and I’m sure our graduates will have lots of choice as their careers blossom. Certainly, I never really understood how much influence your boss can have on how much you enjoy your job and ultimately how successful you are. Great managers are worth seeking out, and ‘less than great’ managers should be avoided if you possibly can. Take my word for it!
What long-lasting impact do you hope NU-Seattle will have on this year’s graduates?
All of this year’s graduates came to the campus when it was new and somewhat unproven. I hope they learned — through hopefully an excellent experience — that it is well worth looking at emerging opportunities, especially if they are trying to break new ground and be innovative. Taking a chance can pay off as long as you are diligent.
Do you have any advice for our graduates before they enter the next phase of their lives?
Find a job you love. Every job has its bad bits, but maximizing the great bits and minimizing the bad bits should be your goal for a happy, fruitful career. A ratio of about 95%-5% works for me!
You can see all Dr. Gorton’s publications and citations on Google Scholar and in dlbp.