Computer Vision News - January 2020

Summary Wo en in Computer Vision 26 Besides mentoring them, do you learn something from them in return? For sure! In any mentoring relationship, what we would cal l reverse mentoring, which means that the mentor learns from the mentee, can mean di fferent things. Currently, I don’t have that big of a generation gap with my mentees. I f I were, for example, a very, very senior person, I would be able to learn from these mentoring programs. It is very encouraging for me when they ask some questions. Sometimes they are very insightful questions that help me to think more about those things. Every mentorship relationship is good for both people. Where were you born and raised? I ’m from Iran. Did you study in Iran and then come to the United States? Yes, I went to undergrad and I got my Master ’s in Electrical and Computer Engineering in my home country. For my PhD, I moved to the US about 11 years ago. I pursued my PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University in Boston. "Every mentorship relationship is good for both people." here in Mi lpitas. Currently, for example, we do have a program for high school girls in di fferent levels. We invite young high school students. We have about 20 to 30 students. We invited them, and they were interested to get the mentorship. I am one of these mentors. Every week, I have a one- hour session with one of these students. Do you see in this generation of young girls anything different from your generation? What I see is that they have very good opportunities. They have lots of resources. It was kind of l imited for my generation or even older generations. One of these resources is the Internet. We have access to lots of information. Anything they want to know, they can easi ly search for that. There are lots of organizations that support the young generation here. For example, they can come to J&J. They can talk to me, an engineer, or a scientist. They can learn a lot from me, not just me, also from di fferent leaders. That would be very impactful for them in order to choose their career. These resources are very important things. They can get lots of benef its from them.