ECCV 2016 Daily - Thursday

an opportunity at Stanford to take more English classes, I’ll have that strong liberal arts background starting from high school. ECCV Daily: As a young girl at school, were you successful? Were science and math important to you at that time? Amy: I’d say I was always very well rounded. I never really struggled in science or math. I liked them because they appealed to the logical side of my brain, but again, my high school didn’t really emphasize them as much. I never really found my passion there. ECCV Daily: Where did you grow up? Amy: I grew up in the Seattle, Washington area in the suburbs outside of the city. ECCV Daily: The decision to get more into the scientific area is quite recent. Were you supported by family and friends? Amy: Yes, my father is a software engineer. He was very excited when I decided to start studying engineering in college. ECCV Daily: He didn’t want you to become a secretary? Amy: No, definitely not. My mother is more of a writer and an editor. She was more involved in high school, but she’s very intelligent and we are still able to talk about whatever I’m working on. ECCV Daily: What about your friends? Did anyone tell you that you are going to do something which is quite challenging? Amy: I remember my English teacher in high school who I had for three consecutive years. She was very surprised that I didn’t end up pursuing English or a similar field, but she didn’t say that it would be particularly difficult. The introductory classes at Stanford are very friendly because they are meant to encourage people to start out the track. As you get a few quarters into the course, you start encountering what we call “the weed out classes”. They are much more heavily systems oriented with a lot more hard-core programming with less friendly languages. I think those are meant to make sure you are seriously committed to doing computer science. I had considered more psychology based fields when I was starting out. We have a program that is half CS and half psychology. That was very appealing to me too, but at some point I decided that I relish a challenge, and I wanted to do the whole CS program. Women in Computer Vision 17 ECCV Daily: Thursday