MICCAI 2018 Daily - Wednesday

It was for my studies, because in the city where I was before there was no team in computer graphics and I’ve been motivated by this subject, so I moved to Strasbourg to study computer graphics. What was your original town? Besançon. Nice. Like Victor Hugo. Yes, exactly. You know France very well! I have to – I’ve been living there for 10 years! Anyway, let’s leave Victor Hugo and come back to Caroline. What is your current position? I am an Associate Professor at the University of Strasbourg. I have a PhD and an «habilitation à diriger des recherches». In France, there are two diplomas. There is another diploma after the PhD. What can you tell us about the University of Strasbourg? It’s a huge university. I think we have more than 50,000 students from all over the world. It’s a very attractive university. The campus is very nice, very green. We have scientific excellence. We have four Nobel Prizes in our university. Do you know them? No, I don’t know them personally unfortunately. They are more involved with chemistry. I hope you will be the fifth! [ she laughs ] I’m not sure about that. How has this university been able to keep you for so many years? We have a very good environment, because the lab is really great. I have excellent colleagues. We are very close to physicians, we are very close to the hospital, and we can have very osmotic work with them. They trust us and we trust them. It’s very nice to work with them. And you also teach? I teach more than 200 hours per year to every kind of student – undergraduate or graduate students. I teach mostly basic computing and also computer graphics. Would it be right to say that you feel more like a researcher than a teacher? Well, actually, I like both. Of course, I love research, because you’re discovering new things. It’s great to help surgeons and patients, that’s really motivating, but I also like to see into the students’ eyes when they understand a new concept or a new way of doing things. That’s really nice. You like that eureka moment? Yes, exactly. I like it. I really like to teach first-year students. Most of them don’t know about computer science when they arrive, they just know how to write emails or use Google or Facebook. You’re modelling a scientist? Yes, exactly, and they are discovering programming, and they like it, and they want to make a career of it. I’m really satisfied. Is there one of those eureka moments that particularly stuck with you? Maybe it was when one of my first- year students told me that he wanted to be a math teacher at the beginning, and then after my class he realised that computer science was so good that he wanted to do a PhD in artificial intelligence. I was proud of that. Caroline Essert 19 Wednesday