When did your love of STEM begin?

The fact that my father, who was my childhood hero, was an engineer really inspired me! I talk to a lot of women engineers and it's often a similar story.
In high school I became interested in the brain and wanted to study it and be a neuroscientist. In university I discovered machine learning and decided I wanted to build brains, rather than study the ones we have. I sucked at programming and didn't get it at all. And I now have a PhD in computer science, which goes to show if you try hard and persevere, you can get pretty far.

What did you love most about study in your field of STEM?

I get to work with very smart people, on super cool projects (I mean, self driving cars!). We are all excited about building this product, inventing solutions to problems that currently no one knows how to solve, and making history.
For math it's the fact you have to spend time to really understand it, math is quite beautiful and often surprising. For the natural sciences - it's just how unbelievably clever it all is. - molecular biology, how DNA encodes information, how it gets translated, how brain cells work, and so on - all that stuff is just crazy.

What advice would you give to young women considering a career in STEM?

Trust yourself, believe in yourself. Remember that it's hard for everyone even if they aren't showing it. And most of all, try to have fun, and enjoy it.