Computer Vision News - March 2017

limited to a set of many sensors in the environment, sending data to the cloud where all of the processing is done. The idea is to put more intelligence in the various sensor nodes. This requires a local processing, which will decrease the amount of data sent to the cloud. Also, the complexity that you have to handle in the cloud will decrease. This is a natural way to go. Did you ever feel that, as a woman, you had to work more in order to be recognized? Only a few times. I have to say that I was lucky in this aspect as well. At my work, they are very open minded. There is no gender discrimination. Only once in my career I had to really work much more to convince one person and prove my competence. In general, I didn’t feel this problem. Would you say that you were particularly lucky or this is the standard in Italy? I was particularly lucky. There are women who are not as lucky as I am. What would you recommend in order to correct this imbalance? I will tell you a funny thing. I met with men in the past who complained about issues related to maternity leave: they had a negative attitude towards women in a working group. But what if it were their wife in that same situation? If they compared to what their wife would be going through, maybe they would understand better. Do you think the situation in Italy improved since you graduated? It improved a bit, but I don’t want to say that it improved 100%. We are more committed. Also, companies are implementing policies which facilitate the process. For instance, some women work during maternity leave, as I did: they have to be recognized, even though they are on maternity leave. And the fact that men who become fathers can take leave and assist women. I think it’s very important because a husband’s support is very important in this job, especially when you reach a certain level. What was your dream career, when you graduated? Exactly this! [ laughs ] So what’s your dream now? It’s a nice question. I would like a higher number of people to address much more technology and innovation than what I’m doing now… especially in trying to merge both technology and medicine in the health world. We have started working on this, but there are so many things to do there. Since medicine was one of my first loves as well, I think it could be great. 24 Computer Vision News Women in Computer Vision Women in Science Viviana (center) with partners of euro project Venturi. 2 nd from left is Valeria Tomaselli, who works in Viviana’s group “ I was particularly lucky ”