Computer Vision News - May 2020

3 Summary Séverine Cloix 35 The capital of the world! I lived in Paris for 10 years, so I can relate. What brought you from there to Neuchatel? Well, actually I was not in the capital of the world. I was raised in the suburbs, in what we used to call “Riff-Raff” areas. I think my sisters and I had a very good education from our parents who really wantedus togetoutof there. I couldstudy in what we call classes préparatoires to integrate engineering schools. Then I studied in England for one year and I started my career as a software engineer. I went back to France for four years. I studied signal processing. At that time in the 2000s, I was really fascinated with image and video processing, but I didn’t have a chance to get a position in this domain. So I kept working as a software engineer. First, I was working at Pace, an English company that makes digital TV set-top-boxes. I completely switched to another domain! I had then an opportunity to start a PhD in image processing, so I said: “Okay!” For me, I saw the PhD as a new position and not a new field of study. Do you regret waiting so long? I think it was a good idea because I was much more mature when I started my PhD. I’m not sure I would have reached this level of performance if I would have done a PhD 10 years before. I do not regret it. Maybe if you did it 10 years before, you wouldn’t have learned about deep learning or other things that have become the norm. Exactly. The topic of this PhD was really important for me. You have spent many years in Switzerland, but you are not Swiss originally. No, I’m not. Where are you from? I’m from Paris!