17 Computer Vision News workers in Google, we had people who worked at Meta, and they would all come down to Senegal and take us through courses. We would have mock interviews with them as if we are interviewing for roles in their company. We’dalso sometimes have sessions with them on how to apply for PhD programs and how to choose a career path, and I think it really gave me a lot of understanding. That really was a very huge stepping stone to where I am right now. Through all these challenging paths that you just described, how did you keep yourself motivated to overcome these challenges? Yes, that is a very interesting question! [laughs] Mostly, when you’re from Ghana, and from my region specifically – I am from the northern part of Ghana – people believe that girls like myself should only just go to high school and they are done, and they should get married and stuff like that. When I first got to the university, and I realized that I wanted to do something like this, I met about two women that were from the same community as myself, and they went to the same schools as myself, and they were actually doing very well. When I saw that they could actually leave that community and become great people that would be role models to other people, it sort of motivated me and gave me the understanding that I can leave as well, and I can get to motivate many young people as well. That was one thing that was just the driving force for me to go into research. Also, when I realized that with machine learning we could do so many things and Ghana was lagging behind, it was the main driver for me. I realized that if I get a PhD and I have experience, I can always go back to my country and set up a research lab where people would learn about machine learning and AI, and that way, they can also use it to solve problems in their community aswell. What are you currently working on? Khadija Iddrisu
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