Profile: CDT Alumna Dr Aneta Lisowska
Enrolled 2014, Toshiba Medical Visualization Systems/Heriot-Watt University
The 4-year journey through EngD programme now seems like it happened in the blink of an eye! The programme was packed with technical and business courses, various workshops, summer schools, conferences and most importantly in Canon I was never short of exciting research projects, which kept me motivated throughout the years.
The most challenging part was the first semester at the University of St Andrews. I came completely unprepared from a Cognitive Science background to this interesting new world of laser physics. But it was also a time when the seed of future friendships was planted. Nothing binds more than a joint struggle and I was lucky to be surrounded by very bright people who were eager to help with both physics assignments and autumn melancholia. I think this shared experience was important for strengthening the connections between the research engineers in our cohort.
The most inspiring moment was the first time that I flew for an international conference (International Conference on Computer Vision 2015). I was overwhelmed with the amount of fascinating machine learning approaches for a rainbow of imaging applications. My mind exploded with ideas. If you are stuck in your research searching for inspiration, I recommend attending top conferences in your field – these are the most stimulating and give you a vision to aim for.
As preparation for the next stages of my career, the most useful was interaction with my supervisors and EngD students from the cohorts preceding me. I have looked up to them and tried to learn as much as possible. Currently I am an AI scientist at Canon, and I feel privileged to be surrounded by brilliant people from whom I still have a lot to learn. Recently, the most joyful moment was when I spoke to my MSc student and realised that she is now at the point where I was previously, and I can now share with her what I have learned.
Update December 2022
I currently live in Berlin working remotely and affiliated with the Sano Center for Computational Medicine (a research institute in Cracow) and Poznan University of Technology (PUT). In Cracow I have a small team of six wonderful students with whom we are doing research on mobile health (mhealth) applications for disease prevention. In Poznan I am working on a European project in which we aim to support cancer patients with treatment adherence with use of digital technology (mobile and wearables). I work closely with very inspirational researchers from Israel (Haifa University) and Poland (PUT). My recent research can be found on my website:https://sites.google.com/view/anetalisowska/research
I have kept my connection with Heriot-Watt and have just recently finished the MBA with the Edinburgh Business School which I started as an EngD student.
