My family was one of the few South Asian families in my community in Illinois. Growing up in the '80s, I remember going to the K-Mart with my mom, when she was wearing her sari, and she'd get made fun of. People would ask my mother, 'Were you born with that dot on your head?'

We need policymakers to keep an eye on gender and write policies that are explicitly designed to include underserved populations like girls in computer science courses.

I refuse to see losing as a negative. Obama lost in '83 when he ran against Bobby Rush. Hillary lost in '08. Even Lincoln lost the first election. It's a useful learning experience.

There's no better way of learning from your experiences than having an open and honest conversation with yourself about why you fell short.

In scientific subjects, the natural remedy for dogmatism has been found in research.

Ever since Newton, we've done science by taking things apart to see how they work. What the computer enables us to do is to put things together to see how they work: we're now synthesized rather than analysed. I find one of the most enthralling aspects of computers is limitless communication.

We talk about the Internet. That comes from science. Weather forecasting. That comes from science. The main idea in all of biology is evolution. To not teach it to our young people is wrong.

Wikipedia was a big help for science, especially science communication, and it shows no sign of diminishing in importance.