Computer Vision News - May 2019

doing what you’re doing? I have a PhD in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Rochester. In 2006, I got my degree. Then I moved to California from Rochester to pursue a research scientist job at another startup called Polar Rain. I worked for Polar Rain for exactly ten years. I flew up to Boston twice a year to the Raytheon Company, one of the biggest defense companies in the US. I collaborated with a number of universities: the University of Southern Florida, the University of Maryland, the University of Buffalo. It was great to be able to do both academic and product work. Then I started to work at this new company, Altia Systems. They found me, somehow, from LinkedIn or somewhere. I thought they were a nice option for me to continue my career. Here, it is very different from my previous job where I was responsible for software development. Here, I am responsible for hardware as well, in addition to software. I had to understand some hardware, firmware, and FPGA work. Now there’s some AI work that started here about a year ago. The goal is to make our cameras smarter by letting them recognize people and names. I’m looking forward to learning more in the AI area as well. Should we tell readers the great news about Altia Systems? What happened a few weeks ago? [ laughs ] It started last year, actually, and it was confidential. In December, we had a few companies who were competing to buy us. This company from Denmark called GN Audio offered the highest price: six times the annual profit of our company, something never happened before in the Silicon Valley. They gave a very high evaluation. They would like to open a new center here and get into the video business. This is not the first time that you have such an experience. Is this already your third time? [ laughs ] Not the third time, no, that’s exaggerating. In my previous company, my husband was working with my boss and started a company called Anvato in 2008. They have been acquired by Google about 2 years ago. Since he is also one of the founders, it was a very big exit for us financially. I mainly worked with family-based companies. People are really hard working here, and they are extremely kind and very humble. We always have time to do the real work and not worry about the little things, who is getting ahead and so on... Pauline Luc 27 Computer Vision News Gulcin Caner Women in Science photo: Dan Taylor/Heisenberg Media