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— A part of an ongoing EE Occasions sequence: Range & Belonging in EE. Beforehand revealed within the sequence: Electro Tender CEO Karla Trotman, on Reaching the High
In an unique interview with EE Occasions, Cerebras’ Natalia Vassilieva, detailed her life within the Soviet Union, unveiling her experiences as a lady in engineering that differs from what she encountered in the US.
“No one pushed me towards [engineering], however that’s the surroundings I grew up in,” mentioned Vassilieva, now senior director of product, machine studying on the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based synthetic intelligence (AI) chip firm.
Rising up within the Soviet Union, each Vassilieva’s mother and father had been electrical engineers, and her grandmother labored as an engineer in metal manufacturing.
“One of many eye-openers for me after I moved from Russia to the US was that in Russia, I didn’t really feel like there was completely different therapy for girls and boys,” she mentioned. “You’ll be inspired to do what you preferred to do, particularly women. Once I moved to the States, I noticed that it’s been a totally completely different surroundings, traditionally.”
Vassilieva describes how rising up, it was completely regular amongst her classmates for each mother and father to work, so she was shocked when she realized this hadn’t been the case for contemporaries rising up within the U.S. Equality between women and men within the workforce was a powerful theme in Soviet Russia way back to the early 20th century.
“[The Soviet Union] was not all unfavorable, although you’ll be able to argue about whether or not the explanations behind it had been good or unhealthy,” she mentioned. “There have been some good artifacts, and one is the best way girls had been handled the identical manner as males, significantly after the Second World Conflict.”
Whereas North American girls had been inspired to surrender their positions when World Conflict II ended to deal with their households, in Russia the warfare had a long-lasting impact. Such attitudes persist right this moment.
For the younger Vassilieva, early desires of changing into a ballerina progressively gave technique to an understanding that technical disciplines may be a greater match.
“Technical disciplines had been clearer to me, and it was simpler to know what it means to do issues proper,” she mentioned. “For those who’re making an attempt to resolve a math downside, it’s clear and goal—you solved it otherwise you didn’t. If you attempt to do a composition, it’s rather more subjective how good your composition is.”
Vassilieva accomplished a Grasp’s in pc science and software program engineering—which she mentioned was primarily utilized math—earlier than a stroke of luck led her to the College of Grenoble, and later to change the subject of her Ph.D. thesis.
“You observe within the second what pursuits you, so I can’t say that I dreamed from the start that I might be precisely the place I’m proper now,” she mentioned, noting that AI didn’t exist in the identical type then.
After her Grasp’s diploma, Vassilieva’s French language instructor inspired her to use for an internship in France, and she or he picked the College of Grenoble because it had the closest focus to her background in utilized math, and was near the fantastic thing about the French Alps.
“Solely after I received there did I realise that the group I used to be becoming a member of was centered on the intersection of data retrieval and pc imaginative and prescient,” she mentioned. “I received utterly fascinated with the subject and after I received again from that internship, I modified my Ph.D. advisor and adjusted my Ph.D. thesis subject to time-based picture retrieval.”
Laptop imaginative and prescient on the time used less complicated types of machine studying (ML) for function extraction, main Vassilieva to pursue a profession path in ML. She joined Hewlett Packard (HP) Labs, in St. Petersburg, Russia, to work on each pc imaginative and prescient and pure language processing in 2007 and spent 11 years there earlier than becoming a member of AI chip startup Cerebras in 2019.
At HP Labs, Vassilieva led a group tasked with figuring out the compute necessities for various analytical workloads, together with deep studying (DL), Monte Carlo simulations, graph inference, and plenty of different varieties of information evaluation and analytical algorithms.
“By way of that work, I shaped an opinion on what can be good {hardware} structure, or what properties do I wish to have within the {hardware} to be environment friendly for deep studying,” she mentioned.
Whereas algorithms have since developed considerably, on the time, the largest issues had been coaching with massive batch sizes and distribution of coaching throughout many GPUs—issues that are solely partially solved right this moment.
Cerebras’ wafer-scale structure matched Vassilieva’s imaginative and prescient for what properties an environment friendly DL {hardware} structure ought to have, however becoming a member of an early-stage startup was fairly completely different to working in a big world group like HP.
“It was attention-grabbing to hitch an organization which has one mission—the place all people speaks the identical language and has the identical purpose,” she mentioned. “It’s dynamic and thrilling, you get to put on a whole lot of completely different hats so it means extra freedom, however the primary purpose was that the entire group is pushed by one single purpose, and you’ll’t say that for large enterprises.”
Vassilieva, 43, mentioned she doesn’t see widespread, common challenges for ladies within the semiconductor trade right this moment.
“I assume I’m fortunate to be accepted for who I’m, however [at this stage of my career] I don’t discover it arduous to say brazenly what I believe, I’m not intimidated by high-ranking males, and I imagine open communication is probably the most priceless, most direct technique to get issues completed,” she mentioned.
Whereas she admits this sort of self-confidence would have been more durable to search out as a youthful particular person, she advises women and girls that confidence continues to be key, as arduous as it might be.
“Total, I observe that boys and younger males are extra persistent and extra self-confident, on common,” she mentioned. “I didn’t understand how to try this [earlier in my career], however [women] have to deal with [themselves] as equal…. We have to imagine we are able to do a whole lot of issues, and possibly to belief ourselves extra and be extra assured in what we do.”
