Computer Vision News - May 2019

30 Computer Vision News Women in Science want to start painting. Did you ever paint? When I was a child, mostly oil and gouache paintings. Did you keep them? They’re in Turkey, yeah. My mom keeps them. Let’s go back to work. From all your years working in industry, what did you learn that you would have preferred to have learned before? Perhaps something that academia did not teach you about life in the industry as an engineer that you think you should have learned before and you didn’t. When I was fresh out of my PhD, I had this very stubborn opinion of trying to model everything in the mathematical sense such as during my PhD in image processing. We were modeling what’s happening inside of the camera with different equations, and when I started my job here in California after PhD, my boss told me: “ No, we don’t do that! ” So, we are going to come up with an example-based learning. At the time, in 2006, AI wasn’t this strong, and a professor from MIT published a paper about example-based learning. That paper started many things in our company. Then I thought of how I only have this one way of looking at problems, while there are so many different ways of looking. So, the many years at school were not enough to give you the panoramic sight that you needed to succeed in industry? Yeah. Students will read this interview: what should they do in academia? What advice can you give them for succeeding in industry? First, I tell them not to get stuck in their solutions or in the problems. I would advise them to see industry-based solutions, if they can, not just papers and presentations. Maybe go to industry shows and ask questions about the products because most of the papers that they see at the conferences never become products in the real world. Very often, companies do not have enough time for students at trade shows, because they do not go there for them. It’s difficult for a student to go to a show and say “Please help me! ” They have teachers for that! That’s true. It is a very good idea to keep an open mind because PhD is a very frustrating time, and most people get stuck. They think that they cannot solve the problems or bring a new idea. Ideas come from many places so they should start every day with a new hope that this thing will happen today. Women in Computer Vision