Computer Vision News Computer Vision News 22 Women in Computer Vision I'm very curious, did you see some of the features that you have developed in the real products? Did it happen to you to look on Facebook or Instagram and say, hey, I did this! Yeah, I think some of the algorithms that we built were powering some of the features on Instagram. So I did get a chance to see if we were able to recommend hashtags which are suggesting the action that is happening in the video. That would tell me, okay, this is powered by a model that my group and my team have worked on. Who chose the team that’s working with you? I currently have a group of five PhD students and a few masters and undergraduate researchers. They're all very bright, hardworking, and just brilliant at what they do. As an incoming faculty member, I think it's a choice both of us have to make, both my students and me. I do consider myself lucky that they trusted a new faculty person. As far as I remember, Facebook and also Yann LeCun, whom I have interviewed a couple of times, are very much in favor of dual affiliations, like working for one company and at the same time teaching at some university. What is your take on that? Yeah, I think it is a hard balance to strike, especially if you are on tenure track and there are lofty pursuits. But I've seen a lot of colleagues of mine do that very efficiently. Why did you want to leave Facebook? It was time for a change into a faster pace. We spoke a little bit of the near past. Can we speak of the time before? What happened in India? I grew up in a very close-knitted family. My parents, both of them, educated and working in the service sector. I think it was very strongly instilled in me and my brother that education is our source. It is our strength. It is where we can derive our power. We took education very seriously. I did my undergraduate there and then was very interested in pursuing research. I applied for a master's and joined UT Austin. Then my master's thesis advisor, Alan Bovik, was very encouraging and offered that I stay and pursue a PhD under his supervision. “It is a cost to pay. To quit the family, to quit the friends, to quit your country!”
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