Computer Vision News - December 2016

Paragios: There are two different things. One is technology. The other is the market . When you have great technology, it does not necessarily mean that the market is there. That’s one thing. The other thing is actually something happening in vision now, which I don’t like: the role of academics is to advance science and not trying to beat the performance results on a benchmark. If we do that in the academics, we become like industry where the objective is to reach the target. Universities should be places where people have the time needed to take a step back from the problem and think about the most appropriate way. We shouldn’t have the pressure to make it better and better. We shouldn’t have the pressure of publishing tens of papers each year. CVN: Who is applying the pressure? Paragios: This is the system. When I was a student, a PhD with two of three major conferences was a fantastic PhD, because then you didn’t have a lot of pressure to submit to every conference. It’s impossible even for the brightest students to produce four or five great ideas every year. Now, you have something like 4,000 papers submitted at every major conference, only a few months after the previous one. Academia is a place where startups and industry should look for innovation. In order to do so, academics should have a really close view of what is happening in industry . There is nothing wrong with applied research. There is a big difference between applied research and the application of research to solve a problem. CVN: It sounds like you are saying that academia and industry are not going perfectly hand in hand. What would be needed so that they do? Paragios: It depends on where you are. For example, in the US, industry is investing as much as academia in research. Something that might work really well is taking some people from industry and some from academia with funding grants that actually put these two together. CVN: If I gave you a microphone to talk to all the students in the world, what would you tell them? Paragios: I think they should invest in broad knowledge. It’s better to have broader knowledge than to be highly specialized in something. More knowledge will give you access to a different way of thinking and help you to make the right decisions for yourself and for the rest of us as well . I say to all students: keep working hard and set the bar as high as you can. Never give up. Hard work and persistence always pay off! 8 Computer Vision News Guest Guest “ Keep working hard and set the bar as high as you can. Never give up. Hard work and persistence always pay off!”