Computer Vision News - August 2018

At first, I went into project management because, to me, that was a "real job". Then I realized that I missed science. I missed the excitement that you get when you sit down and think fully about a problem and you find a nice, principled solution to it. So I went back into applied mathematics and was super happy to discover machine learning, because it was maths *and* it was useful in the industry! That’s how I chose this field. I think I was there at the right moment because it was just gaining a lot of momentum. People were excited about it, and that got me excited too. I came back to a scientific career and now I’m super happy about it. That’s exactly what I was looking for, basically. Did you ever live out of France? Yes! When I was a kid, we left to go to Australia for five years in Sydney. When we came back, we came back to Brittany. Moving from Sydney to Brest was a little hard because it rains... a lot! So I left as quickly as I could. [ Laughs ] I spent six months in Cologne, in Germany. Then during my studies, I spent six months in Singapore. How is life in Grenoble? It’s very nice. My mom’s family is from Annecy, which is not very far. I’ve always really enjoyed hiking and mountain sports in general. For me, it was perfect. What is the single most impressive thing you’ve learned from a teacher? Wow, it’s a hard question! One thing that really led me to make the choices that I did… When I was working at Netatmo, a small company in the field of the internet of objects, I had regular meetings with Fred Potter, the CEO. I was still figuring out what I wanted to do next. We talked about it at some point. I don’t know where I found the guts, but I kind of joked about wanting to be where he was, leading scientifically-driven projects. I’ll never forget his reaction. He cried out: “ Well, how do you think I got there? ” Basically, he told me he did a Ph.D., and that’s really what helped him open the startups that he did. At that point, I think things clicked in my head, and I realized that I wasn’t giving up on anything by doing a PhD. It was totally compatible with doing impactful things. That had a lot of impact on me and the choices I made afterwards. “I wasn’t giving up on anything by doing a PhD” “How do you think I got there?” 27 Computer Vision News Pauline Luc Women in Science