MICCAI 2016 Daily - Thursday

Prof. Clare Tempany 7 MICCAI Daily: Thursday think medical practice is incredibly rewarding. I’m a radiologist so I don’t take care of patients. I make diagnosis. I’m sort of like the doctor’s doctor. They come with the problem and I help them solve it. I love this challenge. I love the challenge of taking the data and looking at the images and finding the finding. It’s very satisfying. I’ve been very lucky to work in clinical and now in research as well. I think I have had a very good balance. I think, this will be much harder in the future because clinical practice of medicine is so demanding that it wants 100% commitment with very little time for research. I think this is a tragedy. If it was today, I think it would be better off to do the medical degree, spend one or two years in the hospital, and then go work in a really good industry where I can make a big difference. You can make a bigger difference perhaps in industry today than you can in healthcare. Now it’s hard. It’s really hard to be a good doctor and do really good science at the same time. It’s very difficult. Ralph: In my magazine, Computer Vision News, and also in the Dailies that I have published at CVPR, ECCV and now at MICCAI, there is a section dedicated to Women in Science. Every issue, I interview a woman, and I ask her about her career. Clare: On behalf of the women, thank you… and their husbands, and their partners, and their sons... thank you. Ralph: [ blushes and smiles ] Very often I hear women speaking about the importance of confidence or lack thereof. They say if they had more confidence, they would succeed like a man. Given your experience, why do you think men seem to have more confidence in this field than women? Clare: Well, this is gender biology. Gender biology is really driving those two answers. Remember back in the beginning when we all started. The man was the hunter. He had to go out and find the food for the family because he was stronger. The women stay at home to nurture the children because they are the only ones that can get pregnant and have babies. It goes way back. This is engrained in our DNA. The women are the team builders, the family, the protectors, and the homemaker. The man goes out, he hunts, he brings back the animal, and he feeds his family. Usually, it’s still somewhat the same even today. We are trying very hard to change this of course. We have to create more and more opportunities