• Question: when did you become interested in this and why?

    Asked by anon-234857 on 20 Sep 2019. This question was also asked by anon-235218.
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 20 Sep 2019:

      tl;dr: it started with video games, and I just kept following my dreams 🙂

      My career progressed from interest in video games, so I was initially interested when I was 4 years old 😀 Video games were fun, and computers were new and magical to me.

      Then I was generally interested in sciences, so that’s what I picked in school. My parents bought me a lot of encyclopedias, so I was always surrounded by ideas in technology and sciences.

      When I had to choose a subject to study at university, I picked maths (even though I didn’t do that well at it at school). Maths was what connected all the sciences, and I coulnd’t decide which science to pick.

      Then I worked for a year at IBM, and they were launching artificial intelligence things (maybe you’ve heard of Watson computer which outplayed champions in Jeopardy!). I connected that to how good or bad AI was in video games, and started reading books about artificial intelligence.

      I liked the science fiction idea of people talking to robots, but there wasn’t anything like that in real life apart from Siri at the time, so I applied for a PhD in computer science to study talking robots and the like.

      Now I have skills in computer programming, artificial intelligence, and human-robot interaction design. I am using those to teach computers to guess things, for example, guessing the author of the book from the text of that book.

    • Photo: Shruti Turner

      Shruti Turner answered on 4 Nov 2019:

      It wasn’t really until my Masters degree, aged about 22, that I really got interested in prosthetics. I always like engineering, physics and maths at school and so did an Aerospace Engineering degree at University. I realised that wasn’t really for me as I wanted to more directly help people. I also got my own joint problems so became interested in biomechanics so did a Bioengineering Masters. It was during that course I did a module in Prosthetics and it just clicked!

    • Photo: Nicola Asker

      Nicola Asker answered on 12 Mar 2020:

      I became interested in the energy industry while I was at University as it is so important to people’s daily lives and has a wide range of engineering challenges involved.

    • Photo: Miriam Hogg

      Miriam Hogg answered on 12 Mar 2020:

      Hi, i’m a bit late answering this but I hope it helps either way!

      So I was always interested in space. When I was young my dad used to get the ‘New Scientist’ magazine which I would read, if I didn’t understand something I could ask my dad, and if he didn’t understand I would google it.
      When I was in my GCSE’s I got the chance to do an astronomy GCSE which I really loved.
      I was also interested in computer science, specifically CGI in games and movies. But it turned out I was better at physics than coding so I did astrophysics at university (and learned to code anyway!)

      I’m not sure why I was interested exactly. I think it’s because there are so many unanswered questions and mysteries in physics, and some truly beautiful things to see 🙂

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