William K. Moses Jr. (Billy)

Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Computer Science at Durham University.
Working on fun stuff related to the theory of distributed computing.

[William K. Moses Jr. (Billy) @wkmjr]

Hi all, Anisur and I gave a tutorial on Dispersion of Mobile Robots at PODC 2022. You can find links to our slides as well as videos of the talks on the website: https://t.co/clyxawTbZM

[Philosophy Of Physics @PhilosophyOfPhy]

Kip Thorne arrived at Caltech to study physics without having learned calculus.

Although he had been fascinated by astronomy from childhood, the pace of Caltech was unlike anything he had experienced. He was surrounded by exceptionally prepared students and began to feel that he thought and read more slowly than nearly everyone around him.

In his Nobel autobiography, Thorne admitted:

“I had had no calculus, I was a slow reader.”

For roughly eighteen months, he said that he “stumbled and struggled” through the mathematics and physics expected of a Caltech undergraduate.

Instead of concluding that he was not capable of becoming a physicist, Thorne changed the way he studied.

He created a separate notebook for every important course. In each one, he rewrote the central ideas in his own language, reconstructed the mathematical derivations for himself, and searched for a physical explanation behind every equation.

By the middle of his second undergraduate year, he had caught up. This method of rebuilding difficult subjects from first principles remained part of how he learned throughout his scientific career.

Thorne later became one of the world’s leading experts on black holes, curved spacetime and gravitational waves.

He shared the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics with Rainer Weiss and Barry Barish for decisive contributions to LIGO and the first direct observation of gravitational waves.

[Brady Long @thisguyknowsai]

A woman who flunked her way through every math and science course in high school enlisted in the United States Army the day after graduation because she had no other options.

She learned Russian. She translated on Soviet trawlers in the Bering Sea. She worked at the South Pole Station in Antarctica. Then in her mid-twenties she decided to go back and learn the exact subject that had defeated her. She earned a degree in electrical engineering, then a master's, then a PhD in systems engineering. She became a professor of engineering. Then she built the most enrolled online course in the history of the internet.

It is a course about how to learn.

Her name is Barbara Oakley.

Here is the story, because the person who taught more humans how to learn than anyone alive is someone who spent the first half of her life believing she could not.

Barbara was born on November 24, 1955 in Lodi, California. Her father Alfred was a bomber pilot in the US Army Air Corps during World War II. She grew up convinced she was not wired for math. She did not just struggle with it. She flunked it. She flunked her way through high school math and science courses and saw no path forward that required either.

She enlisted in the Army immediately after graduation. She rose from the rank of Private to Captain. She was recognized as a Distinguished Military Scholar. She leaned into the one thing she was good at, languages, and became fluent in Russian.

The Army sent her to places most people never see. She worked as a Russian translator on board Soviet trawlers on the Bering Sea during the final years of the Cold War. She worked as a communications expert at the South Pole Station in Antarctica. She thrived in extreme environments. But a thought kept following her. The world seemed to reward people who could do things she could not. Calculations. Technical reasoning. Systems design.

She began to wonder whether her problem with math was permanent or whether it was a problem with how she had tried to learn it.

In her mid-twenties she did something most people would never attempt. She went back to school to study the subjects she had failed at. She enrolled in mathematics and engineering courses and committed to learning them from the ground up. She was starting over at an age when most engineers were finishing their degrees.

She earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. Then a master's degree. Then a PhD in systems engineering. She became a Professor of Engineering at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. The woman who had flunked high school math was now standing at a whiteboard teaching engineering to hundreds of students.

Then she asked a question nobody else in her position was asking. Why had she failed the first time, and what had changed the second time?

She spent years studying neuroscience and learning science. She collaborated with Terrence Sejnowski, the Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute, one of the most respected neuroscientists in the world. Together they built a free online course on Coursera called Learning How to Learn.

The course exploded. It became the most popular massive open online course ever created. Over two million students registered in the early years. The number has continued to grow. It teaches the mental tools experts use to master difficult subjects, chunking, spaced repetition, focused and diffuse thinking, and it is grounded in neuroscience rather than productivity hacks.

She wrote A Mind for Numbers, subtitled How to Excel at Math and Science Even If You Flunked Algebra. She wrote Mindshift. She wrote Uncommon Sense Teaching. She won the McGraw Prize, often called the Nobel Prize for Education. She won the Chester F. Carlson Award from the American Society of Engineering Education. She became a Fellow of IEEE. Her research was described as revolutionary by the Wall Street Journal. She published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A woman who flunked high school math built the most enrolled course in the history of the internet about the thing she was worst at.

She did not overcome a limitation.

She studied the limitation itself, and turned it into a curriculum the entire world now learns from.

[William K. Moses Jr. (Billy) @wkmjr]

Important Dates
Paper registration: May 27, 2026
Submission deadline: June 1, 2026
Rebuttal phase: July 21-25, 2026
Notification: August 5, 2026
All deadlines are at 23:59 AoE.

[William K. Moses Jr. (Billy) @wkmjr]

Hi all,

This is the final call for papers for DISC 2026.
The paper registration deadline is soon: May 27th, 2026.

The submission webpage is here: https://t.co/ChOF2Z7nZD

The full call is available here: https://t.co/ItccrjNDw1

[William K. Moses Jr. (Billy) @wkmjr]

Conference Overview
40th International Symposium on Distributed Computing
November 9-13, 2026
Rome, Italy
https://t.co/H1rAwFA2yH

[ACM SIGACT @sigact]

Congratulations to Scott Aaronson, inaugural recipient of the Luca Trevisan Award for Expository Work!

This award is intended to promote and recognize high-impact work expositing ideas and results from the Theory of Computation

https://t.co/ecQFRp8tdD

[William K. Moses Jr. (Billy) @wkmjr]

This is the second call for workshops & tutorials at DISC 2026.

Here is the full call with instructions on submission: https://t.co/vUktA1S3S3

Important deadline:
Workshop/Tutorial proposal deadline: April 30, 2026, at 23:59 AoE.

[William K. Moses Jr. (Billy) @wkmjr]

Keynote lectures this year:
- Jukka Suomela on Distributed Quantum Advantage
- Maria Potop-Butucaru on Smart Contracts and Distributed Cross-Chain Protocols
- Dariusz Kowalski on Distributed Protocols on Shared Channels (2026 Prize for Innovation in Distributed Computing awardee)

[William K. Moses Jr. (Billy) @wkmjr]

Hi all, this is the second call for participation for the upcoming SIROCCO 2026 conference, which will be held in the scenic city of Durham, UK on June 9th - 11th, 2026.

Website: https://t.co/eWsCJ0R2jp

The list of accepted papers is available online: https://t.co/IEasLdKT7y

[William K. Moses Jr. (Billy) @wkmjr]

Conference registration is open: https://t.co/5vEilPjZye

Note that the early registration deadline is April 30th, 2026.

Info on accommodation & travel: https://t.co/KeCEz6j9M1
Note that this season is particularly busy for Durham, so please book your accommodation early on.

[Thatchaphol Saranurak @eig]

I poured my soul into building this course last fall:

Graph Algorithms via Graph Decomposition

This has been a powerful framework in graph algorithms for over 20 years, but the literature is scattered and technical.

So, I tried to organize part of it into one coherent story.

[William K. Moses Jr. (Billy) @wkmjr]

@podc_disc Please retweet, thanks.

[William K. Moses Jr. (Billy) @wkmjr]

Hi all,

This is the second call for papers for DISC 2026.

The full call is available here: https://t.co/ItccrjNDw1

Conference Overview
40th International Symposium on Distributed Computing
November 9-13, 2026
Rome, Italy
https://t.co/H1rAwFA2yH

[William K. Moses Jr. (Billy) @wkmjr]

Important Dates
Paper registration: May 27, 2026
Submission deadline: June 1, 2026
Rebuttal phase: July 21-25, 2026
Notification: August 5, 2026

All deadlines are at 23:59 AoE.

[William K. Moses Jr. (Billy) @wkmjr]

@podc_disc Please retweet, thanks.

[William K. Moses Jr. (Billy) @wkmjr]

This is the first call for workshops & tutorials at DISC 2026.

Here is the full call with instructions on submission: https://t.co/l3Nv6vEc8k

Important deadline:
Workshop/Tutorial proposal deadline: April 30, 2026, at 23:59 AoE.

[William K. Moses Jr. (Billy) @wkmjr]

@podc_disc Please retweet, thanks.

[William K. Moses Jr. (Billy) @wkmjr]

Hi all,

This is the first call for participation at SIROCCO 2026. We are delighted to announce the upcoming SIROCCO 2026 conference, which will be held in the scenic city of Durham, UK on June 9th - 11th, 2026. 
Website: https://t.co/eWsCJ0R2jp

[William K. Moses Jr. (Billy) @wkmjr]

Keynote speeches from renowned experts:

- Jukka Suomela on *Distributed Quantum Advantage*
- Maria Potop-Butucaru on *The Smart Contract Model*
- Dariusz Kowalski (Prize for Innovation in Distributed Computing 2026)

See you in Durham in June!