#SoCaltech: Yaser Abu-Mostafa

“I’ve spent two-thirds of my life at Caltech. This is my home. It is completely the environment where I can be productive, where I want to help, where I want the students to flourish, where I want good things to happen. It’s a place where you have lots of room to think and to research and to imagine. When you are completely involved in an idea, and you bring it from vagueness to concreteness to becoming a product, and you stumble into things you didn’t expect, and you have an understanding that you didn’t think of, there is nothing more enjoyable in my life. Chocolate is a close second, but that is it.”

—Yaser Abu-Mostafa (PhD ’83) is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science. You can now watch his May 24, 2023, Watson Lecture, “Artificial Intelligence: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” online. To view other Watson Lectures, visit Caltech’s YouTube channel.

#SoCaltech is an occasional series celebrating the diverse individuals who give Caltech its spirit of excellence, ambition, and ingenuity. Know someone we should profile? Send nominations to magazine@caltech.edu.

---