ECCV 2016 Daily - Thursday

ECCV Daily: What gives you confidence, in this kind of setting? Amy: I think it’s just layered experiences of doing tens of these projects. Even if it’s the middle of the night and I haven’t finished the project, I know that I’m going to finish because I’ve had so many other experiences where my own intelligence has pulled me through by the end of it. ECCV Daily: How does your proximity to Olga Russakovsky and Fei-Fei Li help you feel more confident? Amy: Olga has been an incredible role model. When I started working with her as an undergrad, Fei-Fei told me that I was really lucky to be working with her particularly because she was one of the best mentors that she knew of. Olga has been in the research environment for a long time. She did her undergrad, her Master’s, and her PhD at Stanford. She was going into her postdoc when I started working with her. She has been above and beyond a really great mentor in introducing me to the research environment for the first time. I didn’t know anything, and she made it clear that I was supposed to ask questions. “Don’t sit there and Google it when you get home. Tell me when you don’t understand something.” That’s a big stigma, especially in research. No one wants to admit that they don’t know something on someone’s poster or don’t know a term that they are talking about. I’m sure I asked a lot of silly questions at the beginning, but I’m not ashamed because that really helped me ramp up quickly. She also brought me to different mini- conferences and research gatherings. She brought me to a computer vision meetup at Berkeley early on and introduced me to everyone as a “rising star in computer vision”. I was a junior in college, and I didn’t think of myself as a rising star. ECCV Daily: What about Fei-Fei? How does she help your confidence? Amy: First of all, she is an incredible role model to aspire to and her background is very interesting. If you’re not familiar, she says that her first startup was a laundromat or some kind of clothing cleaning company that she co-ran with her parents from a young age and put herself through school. She has very humble origins and has become an incredible success. She is also just very involved with all of her students. I’m not a PhD in her lab so I don’t have as much contact with her that other students have, but I’ve noticed that she really makes an effort to be involved in their lives personally. She encouraged me to come to the group meetings and was really helpful in providing career advice early on. ECCV Daily: If there was one skill you could have from Fei-Fei, which one would it be? 20 ECCV Daily: Thursday Women in Computer Vision