Cool researchers with non-traditional backgrounds
Some but not many of the exceptional research people have unique backgrounds and exhibit perseverance in the face of personal hardships.
- Sara Hooker
- She has had enocomics backgrounds with statistics (source), then later joined Google Brain team. Currently she is at Cohere as VP of research.
- David Ha
- Having a full-time job at Goldman Sachs, he has demonstrated his passion on reinforcement learning with fun demos and collective intelligence. His passion lead to transition from finance world into research at Google Brain team in Japan and the seminal Japanese AI company, Sakana AI Lab.
- Geoffrey Hinton
- Geoffrey had worked as a carpenter for a year after obtaining his degrees (source).
- Sholto Douglas