Celebrating Women at Labs: Interview with Harumi Kuno

[Upekha]

In celebration of International Women's Day 2021, millions around the world are taking time to celebrate women and their stories. To celebrate their contributions to Hewlett Packard Labs, this week we will be sharing a series of interviews with some of the women of Labs about their background and experiences, as well as their hopes for the next generation of women in STEM.

HPE Harumi Kuno

Harumi Kuno’s interest in computer science began early in her life, which was further encouraged by professors while pursuing her bachelor’s degree. For over twenty years, Kuno has been a crucial and reliable member of her teams, as evidenced by her contributions towards database technologies and developments.  

In her interview, Kuno, a principal research scientist, shares a glimpse into the role Labs plays and emphasizes its diverse set of expertise that fosters a unique environment to create better outcomes. 

Labs offers the company deep expertise across a broad range of technical areas. “What I like about Labs is that it’s a microcosm of the company,” she says. “People are working at all levels of the stack from photonics to machine learning and AI to edge computing. Labs has people with deep expertise across the many technologies that span our company.”   

This diversity of expertise at Labs bodes well for future advances, which Kuno noted. “HPE’s strong HPC offerings means that we are in a good position to provide services, particularly those that involve AI and Big Data workloads, at large scale.  HPE can offer workload-optimized hardware and software, either at the customer’s site or off-site, and with attractive payment arrangements by HPE’s Financial Services.” The collaboration between Labs and HPE business groups propels innovation for the company and enables the delivery of advanced technologies into next-generation products and solutions. 

She closes the interview with a piece of advice for the next generation. “Everyone needs to be on guard against learned helplessness” says Kuno, who stressed the importance of learning from failure, asking for help, and being kind to one another.  Having the right mindset is essential.

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Harumi Kuno, Principal Research Scientist, Systems Architecture and Management Lab

Harumi has a background in the areas of distributed systems, database systems, managed IT services, and Web services.

She has published more than 60 papers in journals, conferences, and workshops, as well as a book, and has more than 45 patents granted. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

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Upekha Samarasekera
Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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