Curiosity killed the cat, goes the old adage. But for Sergio Gago-Masague, curiosity created an unexpected career.
The path to becoming a UC Irvine assistant professor of teaching in computer science was winding and uncertain for Gago-Masague. Growing up in Barcelona, Spain, in a working-class family, he found himself more concerned with making a living. His father, an electrician, urged him to find a job – a trade like his. Gago-Masague did just that: “I have always worked since I was 18.”
But his curiosity enticed him to look beyond the limits of a single trade. It also led him to be the first in his family to go to college.
Gago-Masague’s curiosity about computers ignited at his cousin’s birthday party. He was 8 years old and became entranced by his 13-year-old cousin’s birthday present: a new computer. It turned out to be a gift that would give Gago-Masague a lifetime’s focus.
“I didn’t even know what a computer was,” says Gago-Masague. “It was an Amstrad PC1512, powered with an Intel 8086 CPU, no internal hard drive, and two floppy drives to run MS-DOS 3.2. She told me how to start and operate the computer, and run programs and games.” From that day on, every time he visited, he sped past the cursory relatives’ greetings and made a beeline to the computer. Then he’d lose himself for hours. “It was a new world for me,” he reminisces.
At 12 years old, he received his own computer and would spend days on it, not even stopping for meals, and his parents had to call him for dinner. At 16, he learned how to assemble computers, and at 18, he started working as an IT help desk technician.
Growing up in the 1980s, it wasn’t clear what the future of computers would be. His father urged Gago-Masague to follow his path as an electrician and work in the family business. “At the time, there was a huge rate of unemployment in Spain,” recalls Gago-Masague. It was practical advice that made sense.
After working as an electrician assistant for a while, he decided to “shoot for the stars” and applied to one of the most selective engineering programs in Barcelona: industrial engineering at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC). The program allowed Gago-Masague to explore many areas in engineering. And the following year, to his delight, the university offered a concentration in computer science for the first time.
“When I finished, I wanted to work in the overlap of computer science and engineering,” says Gago-Masague. “I wanted to see how they could create solutions to real-world problems.”
After earning his bachelor’s degree in engineering from UPC, Gago-Masague worked in the private sector for more than five years in product and system design. He started as a product engineer and loved the work. But after six months, he realized he had learned as much as he could. Looking at his colleagues who had been there for 15 years, Gago-Masague became concerned about being stuck. He decided earning a doctorate would give him flexibility and the opportunity to do research.
Gago-Masague continued to work. “I’ve always had one foot in academia and one foot in industry,” he explains. He eventually changed jobs to focus on robotics, and in 2012, his employer co-sponsored him to enroll in the California-Catalonia Balsells Fellowship Program at UCI. Established in 1995 by Pete Balsells and his family, the program’s main goal is to prepare the most talented students from Catalonia in their pursuit of graduate degrees and postdoctoral training in engineering or computer sciences. As a testament to the program’s success, Gago-Masague is now the associate director of the program.
Why UCI? “I fell in love with California,” shares Gago-Masague. “It seemed like a nest of technology with a diverse population. And Orange County seemed like it could become the next Silicon Valley, not vertically, but horizontally.” Even though he had to leave everything behind, and adapt to a new country and culture, he made the leap and came alone, telling his then-girlfriend, now wife, Susana that he would be back in a year.
During the first year at UCI, Gago-Masague worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Biorobotics Lab with his adviser David Reinkensmeyer, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, and anatomy and neurobiology, with joint appointments in biomedical engineering and physical medicine and rehabilitation.
They worked on interactive virtual characters, to help people going through rehabilitation – to engage them and give them real-time feedback about their exercises. “One of the main issues of rehabilitation is that people have difficulty getting and staying motivated,” he explains.
“The strategy was both to take patients’ little progress and amplify it so they could see improvement, and to create a human-like interface to provide patients with feedback and encouragement, as a human coach would do. I got really, really excited about what I was doing with Reinkensmeyer,” says Gago-Masague.
“Sergio had an exceptional ability to solve multidisciplinary problems by learning and integrating new fields, and by creating strategic work plans that targeted core bottlenecks,” Reinkensmeyer remembers.
Gago-Masague also started interacting with G.P. Li, CALIT2 director. “I showed him what I was doing, and he said there was an opportunity to continue similar work in CALIT2.” That work led to multiple collaborations, which included principal investigator Michelle Fortier, associate professor in the Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing. Fortier was looking for support to implement Pain Buddy, a game-based interface to help pediatric cancer patients communicate their symptoms, particularly their pain levels.
“During chemotherapy or other types of therapies, it’s very important to know patients’ symptoms and pain levels. But many times, children can’t communicate well with clinical staff,” says Gago-Masague. “Also, parents may not be as objective as we would wish them to be.”
“Sergio and I began our collaboration many years ago when I was working to establish my program of research to develop and implement innovative means of managing pain in children undergoing treatment for cancer,” says Fortier. “We presented our idea for a mobile health intervention unlike anything available at the time, and Sergio was completely on board and assembled a team of students and investigators to take this plan to fruition.
“Sergio has worked tirelessly over the years to bring his creativity and expertise to our project and has helped us successfully obtain significant funding over the years to reach our goal of a multisite effectiveness trial to demonstrate that Pain Buddy is a helpful intervention for children to manage pain and symptoms during treatment. I am so grateful for this collaboration and look forward to a long future of working together.”
His participation in Pain Buddy and other health-related projects has been recognized by National Institutes of Health awarding $6.9 million in funding. One of these was Mi Propio Camino (My Own Way), an app developed to help Spanish-speaking patients with hypertension remember to take their medications and encourage lifestyle changes. The project was funded by the NIH’s National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, and Gago-Masague worked with John Billimek, principal investigator and associate professor and vice chair of UCI’s Family Medicine in the School of Medicine, to build an Internet of Things intervention that addresses a local, medically underserved Latino community. However, the applications can reverberate into numerous areas of health and wellbeing everywhere through its user-friendly interface and thoughtful approaches.
Concurrently, in 2011, Gago-Masague started collaborative research with the California Plug Load Research Center (CalPlug), which seeks to improve energy efficiency in the use and design of plug-load devices.
Gago-Masague also created and heads the CALIT2 Engaging Technology and Application Design (ETAD) Lab. He has been increasingly involved in ICS-focused research such as pervasive computing, user-centric software design, serious games, IoT and active learning. Gago-Masague has received grants for continuing this work, including an NSF-sponsored cybersecurity project now in its second year.
But all of his varied interests have a common goal: creating interfaces that communicate meaningfully and improve people’s lives.
While continually excited by his own research, Gago-Masague became increasingly interested in helping others. He found he truly enjoyed mentoring students, which led him to consider teaching. He began as a lecturer and from 2015-18, he taught a variety of courses in computer science. In early July 2018, Gago-Masague became an assistant professor of teaching at the Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences.
Even as a full-time faculty member, he continues his lab activities and projects in CALIT2. “It was kind of overwhelming, but I didn’t want to give up anything,” he says. “I have always had a hard time letting things go.”
He also started a family when Susana, who is an engineer with a master’s degree in civil engineering, eventually followed him to UCI. They now have two young children, who are flourishing in University Hills.
However, Gago-Masague is not only concerned about the future of his own children. He’s actively engaged in the future generations of college students.
He has been developing a Capstone Project program in computer science to help fix the “leaky STEM pipeline” and boost employment opportunities. “Underrepresented STEM students don’t always have the opportunities or confidence to compete for highly qualified jobs or to see how their work in the field could help their communities,” he explains. “A capstone program with industry-sponsored projects provides students with valuable hands-on experience in real-world projects and allows them to be more competitive for seeking employment.”
“It’s a win-win situation,” he adds. “Students get experience and companies have a chance to train and screen excellent potential interns and employees.”
He also serves on the admissions board of the University of California. “It’s given me a good vision of how admissions are handled and the current challenges and opportunities,” says Gago-Masague.
Just as Pain Buddy helps to ease the pain in children, Gago-Masague works to lessen the challenges for those hopeful and curious first-generation, low-income students as he once was. “I’m very sensitive to students who don’t have easy access and all the struggles that come with that,” he says.
Through his research, teaching and service, Gago-Masague is paving the way for students to succeed in their programs and realize their dreams, whatever path they may take.
– Tonya Becerra