She Belongs Podcast: #3 My Journey as a Researcher in AI!
The She Belongs Podcast aims to kickstart the conversation on gender inequity and why women belong at the table. Our third episode features Professor Devi Parikh from Georgia Tech and Facebook AI Research and is hosted by Varshini Subhash. Prof. Parikh describes her journey as a researcher in AI and excerpts from the interview are available below.
Varshini: Could you tell us more about your childhood and the influences that shaped your interest in STEM and AI?
Prof. Parikh: Sure. I grew up in a nuclear family in India in a city called Ahmedabad in Gujarat. I am the only child and I went to an all-girls school until the 10th grade. My parents had lived in the US for many years and I was born here before we moved back to India when I was a child. The reason they wanted to move was a mix of wanting to be there for my grandparents and wanting a certain kind of upbringing for me. We weren’t very well off but there certainly weren’t any financial struggles; we were fairly comfortable. Things like education, being disciplined, planning, being organised, being punctual, keeping your space clean and clutter-free were all recurring themes that I saw a lot around me. For example, if we were expecting guests over for dinner, about 5 or 7 minutes before their arrival, all of us would be ready and sitting in the living room waiting for them to show up! :)
In terms of interest in STEM, I think I was always interested in math. Math was my favourite subject and I was quite good at it. At the time, in India, ranking students based on their grades was quite common. Naturally, it was quite hard to escape a sense of how you are doing as a student, as evaluated by these exams. So I was a good student in terms of grades and ranking. My interest in math often led me to use it as a tool for procrastination. :) For example, some other subjects like history and geography required cramming a lot of information which I didn’t enjoy at all and I kept practising math beyond the point where I needed practice. :) My parents were also very closely involved in my education. My father and I used to complete the entire math textbook together each summer and he says he saw a spark in me that made him think I was one sharp cookie — a phrase he uses till today! :) Finally, in India, if you are a good student, there is this general expectation that you will choose either engineering or medicine which may have contributed to why I chose this without giving it a lot of conscious thought. I enjoyed these subjects and the path that looked natural seemed sufficiently attractive.
Varshini: As a student in India I relate to so much of that. Could you name some of your favorite role models and how their influence or story might have changed you?
Prof. Parikh: I think the role models that I have tended to have, have been people who are in my radius. I find it hard to relate sufficiently to people who might have a celebrity status and who I don’t actually personally know. Also, I tend to have role models along specific dimensions. One example is Kristen Grauman who is now a Professor at UT Austin. She is several years ahead of me and I began looking up to her when she was an Assistant Professor. The list of awards and grants she won became my holy grail in some sense and gave me concrete goals to go after. Another example is Joelle Pineau, a Co-Director at FAIR, who has an excellent knack for impromptu verbal communication despite the topics being fairly complex, sensitive or nuanced. Another name that comes to mind is Larry Zitnick from FAIR, who manages to organise large projects which are often interdisciplinary. He sets it up in a way where everyone feels included and like they own a piece of the project, while also focusing on the final goal at all times. Also, some of the work that I do in Computer Vision and AI is often not mainstream and people like Antonio Torralba and Alyosha Efros inspire me with their work, which are also often not mainstream.
As for how they changed me, I think it’s quite subtle but they basically serve as a proof of existence. The fact that they exist and that I get to see them operate in a certain way lets me choose different pieces which I can then adapt to my style.
Varshini: Completely agree with you. Was there a definitive moment when you knew that you were going to be a researcher and what were the circumstances that led up to it?
Prof. Parikh: I don’t think there was a specific moment when I realised that I wanted to be a researcher. I think it was a sequence of events over several years. In my undergrad at Rowan University, we had engineering clinics in all 8 semesters where we could pick a project which was detached from the regular curriculum and work on it. In my junior year, there was a departmental matching process for picking one’s project and I chose computer architecture as my area of interest. However, Dr. Robi Polikar was joining Rowan later that year, which nobody knew. The department tried to do a post-hoc matching for him and he picked me for a project in pattern recognition. And that was my introduction to machine learning.
Though I enjoyed research, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go for a PhD so I enrolled at CMU in the Master’s (Thesis) program. Turns out, CMU ECE got rid of this program that year and placed me in their MS/PhD program. Despite my hesitation, my advisor Tsuhan Chen was confident that I would continue onto a PhD. I gave the qualifying exam as a challenge, passed it and one thing led to the other.
Varshini: Could you also describe your work ethic and talk about how it evolved to be the way it is? Do you believe in working 70–80 hour weeks or do you rely on maintaining a balance?
Prof. Parikh: I think people refer to work-life balance in this context quite often. To be quite honest, I haven’t been able to relate to that phrase much and I don’t fully understand why we see it as work versus life. I tend to think of work as one part of life and that there are several other parts such as family and friends, as opposed to thinking of work as anti-life. I recently came across the concept of work-life integration by Shellye Archambeau whose premise is that balance is very sensitive by definition and that anything being even slightly off can tilt the balance. She likes to think of it as there being more work at times and more life at times but overall, there is a good integration. The way I think about this is, there is a portfolio of things I am interested in doing in life and I decide how I want to spend time on each of them. For example, lately I’ve gotten into macrame, origami and audio books. I maximise the time I spend on this portfolio and minimise the time spent on things that I don’t bring value or joy. Of course, I am fortunate to have a job that I love doing which makes it easier for me to have this outlook, which may not be the case with everyone.
Varshini: Could you tell us a few things that excite you about research?
Prof. Parikh: I love the early spark in a new idea or direction which stems from curiosity and excitement. I find this spark even in things like origami, macrame and generative art, which is an interesting parallel. Secondly, if you’re working in a team of collaborators where there is high bandwidth communication, everyone trusts the judgement of their team members, progress is tangible and the gears are churning, it’s quite easy to keep the initial spark alive. And there are plenty of ways in which this spark can get killed — by poor communication, slow progress or people being unable to come together. But if that spark is kept alive, amazing things can come from it. My favorite part about research though is the fact that it can be a form of creative expression. It allows you to bring yourself to it, be it the problem you pick, the approach you choose to follow, or the people that you choose to work with, which ties in closely with who you are as a person. And I’m really grateful for this aspect of research.
Varshini: Sheryl Sandberg emphasises the need to pick an equal partner, if women aim to be successful at the workforce. Ruth Bader Ginsburg also attributed her phenomenal success to the equality in her marriage. In your case, how has it helped to have a partnership where someone understands your work inside out, shares your professional passions and struggles and is a partner both personally and professionally?
Prof. Parikh: I love this question. For context, my husband Dhruv Batra has had a very similar career trajectory as me. We met in graduate school at CMU during our PhDs, we both went to TTI Chicago, became Assistant Professors at Virginia Tech and are now Associate Professors at Georgia Tech and Research Scientists at FAIR. And I’ve loved it! I love the fact that there is someone that I am completely open and transparent with, with whom I have a large part of my life shared. If you’re fortunate you usually have one or the other. I really enjoy the intersection — we can talk about low-level details during meetings at work for example, with sufficiently high bandwidth. I’ve enjoyed working on several projects with him and our deadlines — so crunch times and relaxation times — are synced which is quite convenient. There is plenty of difference in personality and opinions too, but for certain higher order bits in life, we think very similarly. There are some downsides to this too. Our thoughts are so similar and homogeneous to the point where we worry that we may lack the diversity of thought needed for a fresh perspective on things.
BONUS SECTION:
Here are some fun facts Prof. Parikh shared offline:
- For all her exams, her mother would be sitting in the verandah waiting for her to come back home and check in on how the exam went.
- She stays on top of work and usually has plenty of buffer built in where she can take an entire day, weekend or even a week off on short notice.
- In terms of household chores, for several years, she has been taking care of the more “external” ones like scheduling cleaners, buying furniture, apartment hunting, etc. while Prof. Batra takes care of the indoor counterparts such as cooking, laundry and dishes. She likes reminding him that when they were in Chicago she used to be the one who cooked. In turn, he likes reminding her that this was almost a decade ago!
Be sure to check out Prof. Parikh’s blog posts on time management and her experience as a woman in AI, which she references in the full episode.
For the complete conversation, please check out the episode on YouTube, Spotify or other podcast platforms.
