Bassam Salem
(This article is based on a recent talk I gave at the annual One-U Responsible AI Consortium Summit in Salt Lake City, Utah on October 5, 2026.) For most of my life, I’ve thought of myself principally as a computer scientist–a techie. I sometimes joke that I’m a computer scientist who sold out and became […]
The human mind, and its nervous system, are staggeringly impressive. For those of us with typical sensory access, this framework is familiar: 1. Sight 2. Smell 3. Hearing 4. Touch 5. Taste But I only recently came to appreciate that neuroscience recognizes at least five more: 1. Proprioception – the awareness of body position and […]
Given my inclination to overplanning, most won’t be surprised that I spend my Decembers evaluating and learning from the current year while, more importantly, contemplating and planning the following year. But, it feels different this time; the 2024 to 2025 transition feels more significant, even monumental, to me…and, after some contemplation, I understand why. If […]
It’s a bit of a preview of the rubric I’m using for the book, adding a fifth H to create “personal culture”. These 5 Hs (Happy, Humble, Hungry, Healthy, and Horsepower) extend the team culture we built at Atlas, and form the basis of a playbook of habits, best practices, and tools that guide my […]
It’s hard for me to fathom that, 20 years ago, I was already an adult. After all, I was in my thirties, I was married, I had a two-year-old son, I was working an adult job, and I had adult responsibilities. Oh, and I even had a little hair back then. Boy does that feel […]
A career is a living novel consisting of written chapters that capture the past, a current chapter being written, and future chapters with endless possibilities. Each chapter is meaningful because it’s enabled by the preceding one and makes the next one possible. And each chapter eventually comes to a close so the next one can […]
As I close out this first Father’s Day with both sons as “adults”, I contemplate the power of a particular expression I wish I’d used more often when they were younger: “I GET TO.” 10 years ago, I remember saying things like, “I can’t today because I HAVE TO go to my son’s soccer game” […]
I posed a question this weekend as part of an intellectual exercise to explore a question I find fundamentally important: Do we become increasingly committed to and invested in our deeply-held beliefs as we grow and, if so, is it worth it to “debate” these beliefs with others, especially if doing so can hurt important […]
Looking back at life is like reviewing a multi-dimensional series of chapters organized by changes in location, career, and perhaps most vividly, family. One chapter in my own life, as organized by family changes, has been open for nearly twenty two years: having children at home. I’ve loved this chapter so much. Being part of […]
We were taking a walk near the Pacific coastline when, crossing a bridge over an estuary, we noticed a solitary fisherman navigating his way barefooted through the rocky shore and into the ocean. All of the other fisherman were clustered together on a nearby pier; our fisherman stood apart and away from the majority. All […]