MICCAI 2016 Daily - Wednesday

Sook-Lei Liew MICCAI Daily: Where do you work, Lei? Sook-Lei Liew: I am Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California. I have appointments in occupational therapy and occupational science, biokinesiology and physical therapy, and neurology. I am affiliated with the Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute. MICCAI Daily: When did you discover your interest in science? Lei: It’s actually a hard question because I started out as an undergraduate studying sports medicine and English. Then I took a career test about what I should do next, and it told me I should be a farmer or an occupational therapist. I ended doing occupational therapy because it’s a health rehabilitation profession where you help other people to get better. For example, after a stroke, we help them to recover. Once I started training as a therapist in the health profession, I realized that in fact, there is a lot we don’t know about how the brain recovers. I wanted to move more into the research side to learn more about bioneural recovery to help people recover better. MICCAI Daily: How can a career test convince you to change directions? Lei: I didn’t have a direction really. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I just liked both of that things that I had studied. I liked kinesiology, and I also liked English. MICCAI Daily: What was the motivation? Lei: Once I learned about occupational therapy. The premise of the profession is that we define occupations as anything you do that’s meaningful for you. In that sense, we can help any population to recover their ability to engage in things that make their life matter. That’s something that I was really drawn to. MICCAI Daily: So helping people have a better life is a motivation for you? Lei: Yes CVPR Daily: Thursday Women in Science 8 MICCAI Daily: Wednesday