Pat Hanrahan: “Curiosity and passion determine success”

Shara Tonn, Pat Hanrahan: “Curiosity and passion determine success”, Stanford, April 15, 2021.

Even though he was an inquisitive kid, he was not engaged and not doing well. And then his uncle, a high school student, moved into Hanrahan’s room. One day, he observed his uncle working on an experiment on the planaria flatworm at his desk. Curious, Hanrahan scooted closer and asked him what he was doing. His uncle answered Hanrahan’s questions in a way that he remembers as quite gentle, and from then on, his uncle would teach him everything that he was learning. His uncle’s work was challenging, and his gentle manner encouraged Hanrahan to ask more questions. That relationship cultivated in him a practice of learning outside the classroom and letting his curiosity guide him toward people and experiences that excited and challenged him. Now, as the Canon Professor in the School of Engineering, with appointments in the departments of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, Hanrahan passes that on, encouraging his students to be curious and take charge of their own learning.

Diverse learning in college  

My physics adviser found me a job that allowed me to pay for my education — my family would not have been able to cover the costs — and then he told me that as part of the honors program, I could take whatever I wanted. So I did. Psychology, biology, chemistry, physics, math — I was amazed by all the ideas and all the interesting people around me.

Find your true interest

As I was learning to code, I had a roommate that was into programming, and he introduced me to this new thing called computer graphics. It seemed like a fantasy. All of a sudden, I could turn numbers into a 3D image of a worm undulating on the screen. I was enamored. I somewhat abandoned my worm research and devoured everything I could find about graphics. I also reserved as much time as I could on the powerful computers around campus so I could play around with what I was learning. But it wasn’t enough. I wanted to be around the people working in this field, asking them questions and contributing my own ideas. So, I reached out and got an offer to work for the Computer Graphics Lab at the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT). I knew that was where I wanted to be, so I left my PhD program behind and went for it. 

Teaching

I absolutely love teaching. I teach the basics of computer systems programming to freshmen and sophomores, and I enjoy when I have students who don’t know much about it. I was so amazed when I discovered programming and graphics for the first time — being able to offer that eye-opening experience to others is very rewarding, especially when I see my students’ curiosity sparked. 

More than talent or hard work, I have observed that curiosity and passion determine success, and I really advocate for my students to listen to those inner motivations. With my graduate students, I give them total freedom to do all the fun stuff while I am there, as present as possible, to guide them in their explorations, an approach I actually learned from my Pixar supervisor, Ed Catmull.