David Plonka MS’08, PhD’13 is enthusiastic about life. An accomplished artist, he is currently the Principal Research Scientist for WiscNet (Wisconsin’s non-profit Research & Education Network, a sponsor of the Wisconsin Science Festival in October), a new position that he is reveling in developing. While at UW, Plonka learned the importance of tenacity, building teams with complementary skills and ideas, and what it’s like to be a roller-derby mascot. Read on to learn more about his life, his work, and his art.
What are you currently doing professionally? What do you like about it?
I am the Principal Research Scientist for WiscNet – Wisconsin’s non-profit Research & Education Network (REN). There are about 45 RENs, also called R&E networks, nationwide, and many more worldwide. Headquartered in Madison and founded 35 years ago, WiscNet provides Internet services from before ISPs existed. We connect 525 member institutions state-wide: most schools and libraries in state, including 40 higher-eds, plus healthcare facilities, agencies of the state and its counties and municipalities.
“WiscNet was established in 1989 as one of the first statewide education, research, and public service data network associations in the United States. Today, WiscNet is a nonprofit membership association that provides Wisconsin’s research and education platform in support of a vibrant membership community. Our members include the Wisconsin Technical College System, private colleges and universities, libraries and library systems, healthcare facilities, agencies of the State of Wisconsin, city and county governments, and public and private K-12 school districts.” https://www.wiscnet.net
I like everything about it, but especially these three things:
- My mission is to develop a wholly new research program. A principal research scientist is responsibly for the research direction, and often its funding. I focus, in part, on my areas of expertise but significantly on research collaborations with member institutions and their students. For instance, this spring, I collaborated with a professor and master’s student at Marquette University (one of our members) and ended up serving on the committee for their thesis defense. Since most of WiscNet member schools are K-12s, I also focus on STEM/STEAM outreach and workforce development, especially in matching students to our state’s educational programs. For instance, WiscNet is sponsoring the statewide Wisconsin Science Festival in October; we’ll have events both at our headquarters and at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery. We’re also there to help members connect with UW-Madison’s Center for High Throughput Computing (CHTC) to facilitate the use of remote compute resources via the Open Science Pool (OSPool) nationwide.
- Before this job opportunity, I hadn’t taken a role in an organization where, literally, none of the staff do what I do nor have ever done it. At its best, there are virtually no obstacles that the organization puts in my way; one can’t ask for much more than that.
- WiscNet is headquartered is Madison’s University Research Park. On any day I can drive, bus, walk, or bike to work; most often I bike. When I was interviewing for WiscNet, they asked, “Is it a problem that staff are required to be in the office three days per week?” I said, “Not at all; I wouldn’t consider the job otherwise.” For me, I’ve learned it’s essential to have the freedom to work in the office, in-person, with others. WiscNet’s 25 staff are diverse, talented, and dedicated to serving our members in their research and education missions.
Why did you choose art as a PhD minor? Are you using it in any way today?
I’ve always been an artist. My high school had a strong art program with two great teachers and many offerings – there were semesters in high school that I even took more than one class in art. When I started college (undergrad), I was an art major. However, I attended a small college with a small art faculty, and I found the required courses redundant to those I’d taken before college. When my art prof returned my work with a note reading, “See me about playing along,” I decided it was the wrong program for me. Meanwhile, the school’s computer science department was ambitious and flexible, having student employees. It also had professors who allowed students to solve problems in a new way, and then had the students teach the topic to the class.
Jumping ahead to graduate school: On learning of UW-Madison’s requirement that I do a PhD minor – graduate-level work in something other than Computer Sciences – I chose art. My (sepia-toned) undergraduate transcript showed I’d completed many prerequisites, so I could easily be admitted to graduate level art classes. As far as I know, I was the first Computer Sciences PhD to minor in art at UW-Madison. I needed something completely different for balance. Can you imagine how wonderful it was to walk from the Computer Sciences building with a research-induced headache, portfolio in hand, off to draw nudes in a life drawing class in the Humanities building? UW-Madison had a world-renowned print making program. By the way, printmaking is a very detailed, technical medium . . . it’s not a bad match for a programmer.
Do I use it? Art pervades my thinking and my sense of aesthetics, always. Honestly, I use it most often in food presentation and photography! I love to cook and often spend 30-60 minutes preparing a meal, even just for myself. Textures, colors, composition are all important on the plate.
In my work, this summer, I mentored two high school student interns who helped us develop WiscNet’s first hackathon program. One had a penchant for visual art and anime. As a team, we built an interactive wi-fi and microcontroller-based color LED display, showing hand-crafted frame-by-frame animations, a sort of break-dancing tortoise, that we’ll use in the Wisconsin Science Festival events. Funny to think that at first, in college, I was focusing on commercial art, but just last week I found myself preparing our monochrome logo for the Festival t-shirts.
Is there a project or accomplishment that you’re especially proud of? Why?
I’m proud that I’ve mentored eight graduate students across ten years. When a student is doing detailed project work in grad school, it’s often necessarily hard for them to see the forest for the trees; their head must be full of gobbledygook and minutiae that is required to get the work done. At best, it’s punctuated by insights. Their advisor often clearly sees the big picture, sharing as needed while supporting students’ enthusiasm and effort for the “real work.” Now, it’s rewarding for me to share the big pictures and provide framing and guidance that support students’ successes.
I’m proud that, when I was a scientist with my team in Boston for four years, I went to my boss and said, essentially, “Things are going really well, aren’t they? My mother is in her 80s, and I’m a thousand miles away. I can’t see her often nor take care of her from here. How about if, as an experiment, I move back to Wisconsin, but keep my apartment here to work with the team in person at least a week per month, and two weeks per month in the summertime?”
I’m doubly proud that I’d decided beforehand that the only acceptable answer – and I got it – was, “Yes.” Those subsequent years turned into some of the very best in life: I had two great hometowns, two great sets of neighbors and friends, frequent travel back and forth, and quite a bit of fulfillment. Aside: The word “experiment” is a favorite. For most people, it’s unencumbered by preconceived notions of good or bad. If a person, or a company, isn’t willing to experiment, it may be time to move on.
What motivated you to study computer science?
I believe it was being inquisitive and curious, what I sometimes now call an “investigative mindset.” That said, I came back to it, in part, to gain the PhD credential to direct research, but just as much to personally dive into solving mysteries involving the most complex artificial system in existence: the Internet.
Why did you come to UW-Madison?
I worked on the campus many years before having a sort of mid-life crisis and quitting my job to become a full-time student. I’d seen a number of people continue to work full time while in graduate school and knew that wasn’t for me. I wanted something more immersive . . . to give it 100% or whatever nonsense greater percentage is asked of a grad student. I did interview with another school in the south of France, but after visiting there and interviewing with the professor, who was willing to take me as their advisee, it just couldn’t compete with the world-class research and resources at UW-Madison.
Are there lessons you learned at UW-Madison that have stuck with you ever since?
Sure. I started grad school in my thirties. Some of the classes had calculus as a prerequisite. Calculus was on my undergrad transcript, but I literally didn’t even remember taking it. So, I learned the value of a team. First to learn from my fellow grad students: a fellow graduate student, Gwendolyn Stockman who was a TA, helped me relearn some of it, as well as did Jeff Kline. I also learned to build a team having complementary ideas and skills. In one grad school class, Mike Swift’s operating systems class, we formed a team of coauthors – myself, grad student Archit Gupta, and Dale Carder from DoIT. In our coursework, we decided to tackle a real-world performance problem and submitted a conference paper that won a best paper award.
A simple one is that, “An email never needs to be responded to in less than a day.” The point is that people can send demanding missives that provoke irritation and anxiety, but you can control and redirect that sometimes by just slowing down to a pace that makes complete sense.
Another is that perseverance or tenacity really works. There are many things in life that differently inclined people will never do simply because they are not persistent; they give up. Common problems crumble in the face of persistence. Tenacity can make you a success and a hero to colleagues . . . if that’s what you want.
What are one or two things you did at UW outside of your classes? How did these benefit your education, your current career, and/or your life?
Well, for a short time, I was the mascot for a women’s roller derby team while in grad school and ended up knowing some derby girls who were UW-Madison staff and students. I also did an internship with Google, at the office in Madison, when it was a really small office – perhaps about 10 people. I was a small part of a skunkworks project to make networking in Google’s datacenters faster than Ethernet. The team did it, demonstrating that that change alone made Google search about 5% faster, but the technology wasn’t chosen.
What did you do right after graduating?
Right after graduating, I visited Abe Lincoln on Bascom Hill. I looked down State St. but also noticed, on the hill, that there was a sign with the state motto, “Forward.” I laughed to myself, because I had just accepted a job with Akamai Technologies in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the company motto at the time was, “Faster. Forward.” Then I thought, “What have I gotten myself into?” I moved to the Boston area and was happy to start my new career as a research scientist, proper, and promised I’d stay at least a year, which turned out to be about how long it took before I liked it there. But then I stayed another ten years. It really is the Silicon Valley of the East Coast, and it was good to build quite a circle of friends there.
Do you have any advice for current CS students?
Certainly in travel, have vague but positive expectations. This is also true of life. Spontaneously good things happen all the time.
I remember when I walked when graduating with my PhD, at the ceremony, they provided each graduate with a small card – a two-part form – to fill out and be handed to the photographer when leaving the stage. Of course this was to help them match and deliver photos correctly afterward. The card asked for contact information but also asked for distinguishing features, reading: “describe yourself” I thought seriously, “DESCRIBE MYSELF.” Huh. I paused and wrote, “Tenacious (sometimes).”
So my advice is, be honest, have fun, and . . . be tenacious (sometimes.)
What do you like to do for fun?
As I said, I love to cook; I moderate a cooking group that is very pleasant and uplifting. I love to learn, build, and repair things. Whether it’s a turntable, blender, or a floppy disk drive. (Also, it doesn’t have to spin.) I enjoy learning things now that I wanted to learn when I was young, but didn’t, like learning electronics.