Computer Vision News - December 2016

understanding inside robots to try to make them work like we do? Or you only want to learn better the way we work? Zoya: My work has those two goals exactly, because a cognitive science goal is to understand how it works for humans. From the computer vision side of things, I seek to leverage that knowledge to more efficiently process images or decompose images in the way humans would decompose them, in order to make predictions. Also, we can use that to make smart applications that make use of human cognition as a hack. CVN: What do you dream of producing with that? Zoya: It goes back to the education domain. It’s the ability to customize visual content. I’m not just talking about natural images. I’m talking about content that can be used to teach concepts like graphs and charts. It could also extend to slideshow presentations. I want to be able to connect that to an individual user to whom this content would adapt . If I know where this user is looking and how this user is processing this content, I can adapt it to make this user learn more efficiently and process more content during a fixed amount of time. CVN: Can you give me a tip for memory? Zoya: Whether with using visual slides or presentations, I try to increase the number of associations that you could have into a memory. When I say something, I want to evoke a very clear, tangible concept. If I say something at a very abstract level, it’s not going to be grounded in your memory. If it can include, let’s say, anecdotes or paint a very bright picture in your mind, or show you a very clear picture or diagram to evoke some kind of emotional response, or evoke an association that you might have to something else, you’re more likely to retrieve anything I say around that time because it’s clearly imprinted. CVN: I know that you want to break some stereotypes about scientists and engineers. What are these stereotypes? Zoya: It goes back a little bit to the conversation we had at the beginning about what kind of personalities or people are suited for particular careers and what is their daily life like; what they do and what kind of mindsets and hobbies they have. Some of the initiatives that I’ve done before have been to counter it a little bit. This extends beyond showing women in science and computer science. It’s important to show children that there is a diversity of people in computer science and the other hard sciences. More than just showing them women, it’s important to show them people of very different backgrounds with very different experience levels and interests. Computer Vision News Women in Computer Vision 19 Women in Science “ Show children that there is a diversity of people in computer science and the other hard sciences ”