Computer Vision News - January 2020

3 Summary Niksa Valim 29 Alzheimer ’s. This experience helped me to move to my f irst industry position: I joined Atonarp Inc. , a medical device company, where I led a new optical technology development. It was a very good opportunity for me: I was working as a principal scientist on noninvasive diagnostic imaging systems to detect and quanti fy di fferent blood analytes. Moving from academia to industry was a very good and smooth transition. During my f irst industry position, I was leading and developing non- invasive optical imaging technology, a simi lar technology that I had worked on during my second postdoc. However, I knew my industry work would impact more patients and would show up as a product, which is my passion! detect and diagnose cancer cel ls at the molecular level , which is a very breakthrough technology. When we can diagnosis cancer at molecular levels, we would be able to prevent diseases at an earl ier stage. That ’s very important. It is very impactful . After your postdoc, you moved to the industry, where you are working to this day. Was it a del iberate choice or just any opportunity that came that you took? Do you prefer industry over academia? During my second postdoc, I had the opportunity of continuing my working in optical imaging technology, to answer the basic and fundamental questions about brain, speci f ical ly for stroke and "I knew my industry work would impact more patients and would show up as a product, which is my passion!"