Interview date:
March 11, 2021
Jen Selby is a Machine Learning Engineer at Blue River Technology, a company specializing in computer vision and robotics. It develops farm machinery which can identify and weeds and spray them individually with herbicide as tractors move through fields.
Jen describes herself as a geek, someone who loved math from a young age. With an undergraduate degree in computer science from MIT, she is a life-long learner. She volunteered to attend classes in UC Berkeley's Master's of Statistics program (while working full time) where she learned about Machine Learning for her then-employer. Later, she took time away from the tech industry to work as a computer science teacher and became one of the first in the United States to develop an AI curriculum for high school students.
"Are you a person who really needs a project? Are you a person who needs your friends to be working with you? Are you a person who really needs to talk through ideas? Do you need all of the above? What is it that motivates you and gets you learning? That helps you figure out how to break down problems? Really understanding yourself so you can be a life-long learner. That's the most important thing for anything but especially in the field of technology which is often changing and requiring you to update your skills and learn new technologies."
