Computer Vision News - September 2016

CVN: It seems that during the first years of your career you had very positive experiences with people around you. Did you meet with any difficulties being a woman in this field? Sophia: I wouldn’t say difficulties, probably because I never felt that I am any different than a man. For example, in my current position, most of the time I am probably the only woman in my group or during group meetings. Then it depends on me how I look at others. I know I can work just as well as a man. I can compete with others on the same level. If I think that I can do my job very well, then others will see that I am capable. I never felt that I am different probably because I am very motivated or maybe because I always came across good colleagues and friends . Also it’s a common trend that usually in engineering careers, there are less females than males. If you check in the academia or in the industry, you will see more males than females. Most of the time, it ’s a lower proportion of women to men. CVN: Why did you choose Scotland? Sophia: Because it’s beautiful! [she laughs again] Personally, I like to travel for my career. I like to explore and live in different places. I had lived in Edinburgh , and I already knew that the Scottish people are quite nice and also friendly. I thought that I should try this position because of the good gesture of the Scottish people . It’s also because I was really interested in the project which I am part of right now. CVN: Let’s talk about it. What is the subject of your work? Sophia: I am working on a project called ACE-LP , which stands for Augmenting Communication using Environmental Data to drive Language Prediction . This project is about building voice output communication devices for people with speaking difficulties . Those who cannot speak very well use some kind of device for communication. Since this product doesn’t use any environmental feedback such as sensors, cameras, or GPS location sensors, my role is to incorporate these sensors and to extract useful information from video, for example. Then I view this information for predicting language. This language prediction can help make communication easier for people with these kinds of difficulties. 6 Computer Vision News Women in Computer Vision “ Building voice output communication devices for people with speaking difficulties ” Women Scientists