Celebrating the Life of Sergio Servetto

Celebrating the Life of Sergio Servetto

We are here tonight to celebrate the life of a dear friend and colleague, Sergio Servetto. He was not with us very long but,as will be apparent from the speakers tonight and from the amazing tributes to Sergio that have been written on the condolence website, it is clear that Sergio had a tremendous impact on all who knew him.

I would like to invite Viviana to light a candle in Sergio’s memory, to remind us of Sergio’s warmth and spirit during the tribute.

To begin the celebration of Sergio’s life, we will share some memories with a photo collage, set to the music of the Flower Duet from “Lakme”

Sergio was the most passionate, bold, and brave researcher that I have ever met. Rather than shying away from challenging problems, he embraced them, and threw himself into them with all his heart, soul, and intellect. He was a true role model for me in this regard. He was also an amazing friend: dedicated, passionate, compassionate, and full of warmth. We would often exchange long emails in the middle of the night in California, the crack of dawn in Ithaca, typically after Sergio had been up all night working. The emails were usually in Spanish, and Sergio was by far my best Spanish tutor. I haven’t been able to go back and read those emails since his death, they were so warm and open and beautiful that my heart just breaks to think of them and that there will be no more. I consider myself incredibly lucky to have experienced Sergio’s deep and special friendship. Sergio and I often spoke about family, and this was always at the forefront of his thoughts – he said so many wonderfulthings to me about Viviana, Luciano, and Alejando. His pride and lovefor them was truly unbounded.

The tragic loss of someone so young, so passionate, and so full of life is hard to fathom. There seem to be no words or actions that can really capture the grief and sense of loss. But I hope that tonight we can create a tribute as special as Sergio, which will be preserved for Luciano and Alejandro to know in some way how special their father was to us.

Sergio Daniel Servetto was born in La Plata, Argentina on January 18, 1968. La Plata is a very small town hundreds of miles from Buenos Aires. Sergio received hisLicenciatura en Informáticafrom the Universidad Nacional de La Plata. The best thing for Sergio about La Plata was that he met there the love of his life, Viviana Sitz. Viviana was just 16 when she met Sergio, but she told me that she knew from the first moment of meeting him that he would be the love of her life, and they have always been together since that moment.

After Sergio’s undergraduate work, he moved with Viviana to Buenos Aires to work at IBM. After a few years Sergio was ready for the next challenge, and they left their Argentine country and culture for a very different place, Urbana-Champaign, where Sergio began his graduate studies. At UIUC Sergio worked under Klara Nahrstedt and his dissertation was awarded the prize for the best dissertation in computer science that year. Sergio and Viviana have wonderful memories of their years in Urbana, not just for the warmth, openness, and friendship of the people, but also because their two sons were born here.

P.R. Kumar will now share with us some memories and stories of Sergio’s graduate student days at UIUC., including some words from Sergio’s advisor Klara, who could not be here but very much wanted to participate in remembering Sergio tonight.

After receiving his Ph.D., Sergio worked as a postdoc at EPFL in Switzerland for several years, after which he accepted a faculty position at Cornell. In addition to his teaching and advising at Cornell, Sergio also served as an elected member of their faculty senate and I’m sure in that role contributed to many spirited debates. Sergio’s passion for excellence, boldness, and dedication in research was a true role model for his graduate students. Sergio cared deeply about the research and success of his students and, in addition to being their advisor, was also a true mentor and friend. His first two Ph.D. students, An-swol Hu and Ron Dabora, graduated this past May. The graduation pictures from the photo collage show Sergio bursting with pride on that day. Sergio’s other two Ph.D. students, Yorgos Lilis and MingboZhao, have recently found other advisors at Cornell to continue their Ph.D. studies. Thus, Sergio’s legacy as an advisor will live on through these four.

Ron will now tell us what it was like to be Sergio’s Ph.D. student, after which I will read some words from Answol and Yorgos that they asked me to share about Sergio.

I first met Sergio in 2003 at the Information Theory Symposium in Japan. In fact, one of the pictures in the photo collage is from the night we met –a large group of us formed spontaneously for dinner and afterwards decided to try some Karioki singing together, which is an interesting way to meet a future friend and colleague. I don’t remember all the songs we sang that night, but I do remember that Muriel Medard and I sang “Girls just want to have fun.” I doubt either Sergio or I took the other one too seriously based on that first encounter. I got to know Sergio well a few years later when we worked together on the founding of the Student Committee for the Information Theory Society. The idea of the committee was to make the society of more value to its students, and while many members applauded the idea, Sergio was the only one who dedicated tremendous time and energy to brainstorm about what this committee should do, and to set up and host its website. The committee was originally chaired by me, and in March I handed the baton to Sergio, who was the unanimous choice of the students to take over the chair role. Sergio, as was his way, immediately threw himself into the job, beginning several new initiatives, including one for an annual week-long winter school in information theory for graduate students. The new committee chair, Aylin Yener, had the school approved by the Information Theory Society last night; the first will take place next spring or summer, and will be named in honor of Sergio.

The student committee is now a vibrant and successful part of our society, due in part to Sergio’s efforts. When news of Sergio’s tragic accident began to circulate, there was a tremendous outpouring of shock and grief from the students, especially the student volunteers within the student committee. It was their idea to host this tribute for Sergio at Allerton.

Ivana Maric, Brooke Shrader, and Lalitha Sankar have been among a handful of student volunteers that worked very closely with Sergioand myself to found and grow the student committee. I would now like to invite them to share their thoughts and memories of Sergio.

Although Sergio’s Ph.D. thesis was in computer science, shortly after moving to Cornell Sergio read a paper on information theory and was immediately hooked. Despite entering this challenging field at a relatively late career stage, Sergio made many profound contributions very quickly, and at the time of his death he was working to crack a 30-year old open problem in multiterminal source coding. His first presentation on this work was last year at the Information Theory Workshop in Uruguay, and the excitement and enthusiasm following the presentation of his bold and creative new approach to the problem was truly remarkable. Sergio had been working nonstop since that presentation to nail the proofs and close the problem. I believe there are few if any researchers that, pre-tenure, would attack such a challenging problem and not rest until it was solved. I have no doubt that Sergio would have nailed this problem eventually. He knew it so well and was so smart, creative, and persistent that he never would have given up until it was done, regardless of whether it took him months or decades. I believe Sergio as a researcher is best described by the quote he had from Theodore Roosevelt that is printed on the back of the tribute program. Sergio indeed spent his time on research problems worthy of great daring. Had he lived longer, I believe he surely would have known and been recognized formany triumphsof high achievement. Sergio’s research philosophy, drive and boldness were a true inspiration to me and many others. I wish all researchers were as courageous, undaunted, and pure in their motives as Sergio.

Sergio’s inspiration as a researcher and dedication as a volunteer was of incredible value to the Information Theory Society.

Bixio Rimoldi, president of the Information Theory Society, had asked to speak about Sergio’s contributions to the society tonight. Unfortunately, he had to change his plans unexpectedly to visit a very sick friend before returning to Europe, but he asked me to read the following words on his behalf.

Joao Barros was one of Sergio’s closest friends and collaborators. Joao was the first in the community to hear of Sergio’s tragic accident, and I first heard the news from him. I am grateful to have someone as warm and caring as Joao with whom to share this terrible period of loss. Joao has been instrumental to the family and the community during this difficult time: setting up an online condolence website and trust fund for Sergio’s family, helping to get Sergio’s professional affairs in order, coordinating with Cornell and the Information Theory Society on ways to help Sergio’s family, and doing as much as possible to preserve Sergio’s memory and legacy.

I would like to invite Joao to share with us his memories of Sergio.

Many of you have stories and memories to share about Sergio. I would like to invite anyone who wishes to share these now, either by coming up to speak, or signing the cards on the back table. These will be used to create a book of our memories and tributes for Viviana, Luciano, and Alejandro.

It is very difficult to lose someone you love, and to wish that all the beautiful words we are now saying could have been heard by Sergio when he was alive. We live frantic lives in a busy world, and then all of a sudden it is too late to tell someone how much they meant to you. So if there is a silver lining to Sergio’s death, it is a reminder to take that time, hug the friends and family that you love, spend time with them, and tell them how you feel about them. Perhaps over a lifetime this will cause a few less papers to be written, a few less theorems proved, but in the end, looking back, it won’t be regretted. I believe the outpouring of love and friendship tonight is what really defines Sergio’ssuccess, so much more so than his papers and theorems.

We will close the tribute with a song by Violeta Para. It is a Chilean folk song sung by Mercedes Sosa. The first line is “Gracias a la vida, que me ha dado tanto”, “Thanks to life which has given me so much”. This was one of Sergio’s favorite songs, and over this past year of great professional difficulties, Sergio sent this song to Joao after a particularly tough conversation about his future. Despite everything, he knew he was a lucky guy, and that the love and support of his friends and family would get him through the rough times, and that many good things were ahead. I wish he was still here so that all those good things could have come to pass.

Gracias a ti Sergio, que nos has dado tanto de tu calor, espirito, y inspiración. Nunca te olvidamos, y siempre vivaras en nuestros memorias y corazones.

Thanks to you Sergio, for having given us so much of your warmth, spirit, and inspiration. We will never forget you, and you will live forever in our memories and in our hearts.

Andrea Goldsmith

Remembering Sergio (from Klara Nahrstedt)

Sergio was one of the best PhD students in the Department of Computer Science between 1996 and 1999. I was very fortunate to be his PhD thesis advisor and see him growing into a mature colleague and scientist. He was fearless when it came to learning and intellectual experimentation. When he got excited about new problems, he started to solve them systematically. If needed, he took the hardest classes there were to understand the mathematical and experimental tools in order to solve the problems. He did not care about grades, he cared about knowledge and understanding, about moving the science forward and solving problems that were in front of him.

His excellent PhD progress and overall work were rewarded by receiving the first Ray Ozzie Fellowship in 1998. At the awards ceremony, Ray Ozzie, now the Vice President of Microsoft, had a wonderful discussion with Sergio. Ray was delighted for Sergio to have received this fellowship. The final PhD thesis on multiple-description source-channel coding over Internet networks was an outstanding work as well and was awarded by the Computer Science Department with the David Kuck Outstanding PhD Thesis award in 1999.

I will definitely remember Sergio as a wonderful PhD student, colleague, and researcher who left Urbana full of life, ambitions, goals, ideas, and with a very bright future in front of him. Although we have not worked together after he left Urbana, I have followed his work, we talked about his results and as an advisor I was very proud of him what he achieved in such a short academic time. He will be very much missed by me and all of his group members from the Multimedia Operating and Networking Systems (MONET) group.

Reminiscences of Sergio

It was a little more than ten years ago, in Spring 1997, that I taught a course on Information Theory. It was a class of 21 students, of whom two dropped out. It was my first time teaching Information Theory, and I have taught it one other time since. The only person I remember distinctly from that course was Sergio Servetto.

We used to walk to and from Everitt Lab to CSL, and I was intrigued to discover that he was from the Tierra del Fuego, the land of fire. Indeed his eyes had a fiery intensity, his passion was intense, and his respect for professors was old worldly. He was an extreme point in all senses of the phrase. We interacted several times in many ways. He took issue with a mid-term score, and was apparently right, since I subsequently sent a message to the TA, to increase his score by ten points. He once emailed me a lengthy question about a zero-error capacity problem I had assigned as homework, and apparently did quite a bit of research on it, for a few days later he sent me the Abstract of Shannon’s paper on the subject.

He had a genuine love of learning, which explains why we are all gathered here, celebrating Sergio the Information Theorist, with friends and collaborators all over the world.

Though Sergio was interested in source coding, his emails were not brief or Huffman coded by any means. Sergio felt science, and the reader could feel his feelings. He delved into its history. He was a connoisseur of knowledge, taking a broad array of courses that he certainly did not have to take, if all he was wanted was a mere Ph.D. This was his second course with me; he had taken a course on Stochastic Systems a year earlier.

In his career, Sergio proved to be an excellent strategist. Where many see leaves, he saw the forest. He was a great problem formulator. Where many work on derivative questions, he posed new ones. He thought about big open problems. Where many are intimated by decades old questions, he experimented with approaches to answering them. Research and learning did not just have a place in his head, they were embedded in his heart. He was emotional and passionate about them.

Looking back over his emails to me him over the years, I found a particularly poignant one, one that captured his essence. I will read out an extract; the full email is in the volume comprising this tribute:

“I remember once, when I was preparing my prelim, I went to borrow a copy of your book with Varaiya, to double check some claims I wanted to make. I remember when I went to return the book I told you I was trying to find a way to make something out of my career... Well, I think I have found my path. It's not an easy one, and I don't even know if I will make it to the end. But as I told you then: I am trying. And so far, things have been going well! I just hope they continue this way...”

I have read that Paul Erdos believed that God has a book in which he has written down all the most elegant and beautiful proofs of mathematical problems. Sergio, we hope you now have the pages for the multi-terminal source coding problem that was so close to your heart. You will always live on in our hearts.