In the fall of 1990, I decided to pursue a Ph.D. in Computer Science.  In the winter of 1991, I decided to apply for the Department of Energy’s Science and Engineering Research Semester (SERS) program.  At the time, I could not have anticipated the profound impact of these two decisions.  I knew almost nothing about the DOE labs and had never heard of automatic differentiation.  Yet, six years later I defended a Ph.D. thesis on “Automatic Differentiation of Parallel Programs” and accepted a postdoctoral position at Argonne.  In this talk, I reflect on my personal and scientific journey to date, describe my ongoing research in program analysis and transformation, and present a vision for where MCS, Argonne, and DOE could be headed.