Computer Vision News - April 2020

3 Summary Mehrnoosh Sameki 27 touch with researchers, doing state- of- the-art research, that expectation was for sure fulfilled. The second expectation that I had, which was not originally fulfilled, was I thought when leaving Iran and coming to America, that all the facilities are there and that I’ll have a very comfortable life from the get-go. That was an expectation that was not fulfilled when I came to America. We have a saying in Iran: “The sky is blue everywhere.” It tries to say that everywhere you go, it has its own challenges, positive and negative, advantages and disadvantages, that you have to go through. My transition to that moment when I felt like “here is my home” was an 18+ months journey for me. It wasn’t like, oh this is an international country. I’m going to come in from day one, and I’m going to be accepted. I’m not saying that I wasn’t accepted, but it’s a different country, a different culture. The west is very, very different from the east. The values that I cannot really expand their branches to our country. I always dreamed to one day join Google, to joinMicrosoft, to join Amazon, to work for these companies, to work with the best people around the globe. Also, the idea of learning about other cultures was really interesting to me. I would say that my first motivation was to work with the best of the best in the globe. I feel like in America right now, everyone is from a different country. At least at Microsoft, we are a highly international company from all different countries. I learn from them. The second was, I wanted to experience beyond Iran, to interactwithdifferentpeople, different cultures, but also get an experience of living in different countries as well. You must have had expectations when you moved to the States. How did living in the States meet those expectations and how it didn’t? That is a very awesome question! I would say that the expectations that I had about learning the state-of-the-art technology and state-of-the-art research, having access to the best in each field, being in " I grew up in a situation where I had a voice, a very, very strong voice, and I could follow my dreams." "Iranian women have a very strong drive."