Computer Vision News - January 2018

24 Computer Vision News Raquel Urtasun and academia together can actually create a better place. Do you feel more like a teacher or more like someone working at a corporation? I don’t feel like a person working in a corporation actually. I have a research lab in industry where I have most of my PhD students working. They are full- time employees and full-time students. I built my lab really as a copycat of what I had in university because I believe when you have a really nice environment, where you can be free to work on what you like, to wake up every day and think “ I want to know the answer to this ”, that’s how everybody should work. When and how did you decide that would be your direction? I think it was very clear from the beginning. Shame on me because actually Uber is my first job in industry, which I started eight months ago. It was very clear that I really always wanted to know things that we didn’t know. That’s the research spirit. I like the challenges. What would you like your students to remember the most? That’s very interesting. As a PhD advisor, what one hopes for is that each student develops. They are like a diamond that needs to be polished. The hope is that you help polish so that when they graduate, they are at their peak “ I really like the idea of creating a platform where everybody can benefit, not just the rich. ” Guest