Computer Vision News - December 2021

49 Christina Koutsoumpa Dr Douglas Perrin, who became my PI later, showed interest in extending together my denoising methods for cardiac MRI to novel denoising methods for echocardiography. He contacted me, we had an interview and… ....You started working for him? Yea! [ laughs ] That was it! I had paid a visit to Harvard Medical School a few months earlier, during which I presented my PhD work to a small group of the Cardiac Surgery Department at BCH/HMS. I presume this presentation stimulated the discussions, which led to my interview with Dr Perrin and admission later on. What advice do you have to give a young student starting down the same path? Would you tell your younger self to go with the flow, as you did? The advice I would give to my younger self is to keep dreaming and set long-term goals. But during the journey, try to be flexible. Don’t let yourself down over the difficulties or obstacles. Whenever you see a slightly different path, consider it. See if you like it. Be flexible. Go with the flow, but never forget your ultimate goal. Overall, do something that you like, because this is the only way to become successful, to put effort into it… Or, if not successful, a happy person [ laughs ]! You certainly made a lot of sacrifices to come this far. You dedicated many hours to this. Was it worth it? That’s a reallygoodquestion! [ laughs ] I think of my favorite poem that accompanied me during this journey. It’s called Ithaka from Constantine Cavafy. This poem says something like as you set out for Ithaka, you will encounter many obstacles along the way, many scary creatures and things that will discourage you from reaching your goal. Don’t give up! One day you will reach your goal, in this case to go back to your hometown, your island. When you reach your island, you will realize that the important thing wasn’t reaching the island in the end, but the journey and how it If it were super easy, there would be no need to discover it!