Eve Myadze-Pike Tackles Real-world Challenges as Innovation Intern at Ubihere
Eve Myadze-Pike is passionate about computer vision and artificial intelligence. As a computer science and engineering major at The Ohio State University (OSU), she studies it most days and into the night.
And like any passionate learner, Eve also studies role models. She kept seeing articles about one of those, Dr. Alper Yilmaz, Ph.D., professor of Geo-Informatics at The Ohio State University. “Dr. Yilmaz has been published and cited in more than 12,000 articles,” Myadze-Pike said.
Since Dr. Yilmaz’s defended his Ph.D. dissertation, “Object Tracking and Activity Recognition in Video Acquired Using Mobile Cameras,” in 2004, he has been internationally recognized as an expert in determining position, movement, and interaction of objects in 3-dimensional space. He is also the founder and CEO of Ubihere.
Whether it was serendipity, luck, or focus on her path, Eve’s search for a summer internship led her to Rev1’s Innovation Internship program and to an open role at Ubihere.
“When I had the opportunity to interview with Ubihere where Dr. Yilmaz is the founder and CTO, I began this most amazing experience,” said Myadze-Pike. “Dr. Yilmaz is a visionary and non-stop cutting edge. He is warm and brilliant. In response to research that I had done, he said, ‘Good job. Keep up the good work.’ The fact that I get to participate in a conversation between the founder of the company as well as the company’s vice president… That I get to apply my skills to work on a product, blows me away.”
Interns at Ubihere develop industry-specific applications for medical, retail, and military.
Ubihere develops solutions that extract information from the environment in autonomous manners. The firm has two tracks of development. Ubivision monitors processes and interactions; Ubitrax tracks equipment, people, and more.
Mike Karnes, Principal Software Developer at Ubihere, leads the company’s computer vision development team. In addition, he is the leader of multiple strategic projects—the Ubivision smart camera system, a drone visual navigation system, and an AI-powered inventory management system for the army, the project where Eve Myadze-Pike works.
Karnes, a Ph.D. candidate with a master’s in mechanical engineering, also Myadze-Pike, and four more college interns. He is ideal for the job, having participated in multiple summer internships as a student and as a teaching assistant in graduate school. “I encourage summer interns on roads that are uncertain, fostering their natural curiosity. Eve brought so much interest and enthusiasm to the army project,” Karnes said.
“In a startup, things generally go different than expected. In our computer vision lab, we are working with software that came out so recently that it is impossible to hire someone with previous experience. It takes that willingness and kind of enthusiasm to develop an understanding of these new methods that have not been published before. Really, the interns are bested suited for this explorative type of work,” said Karnes.
Myadze-Pike is working on a project that will solve a big problem for the U.S. military—a project so important that Ubihere received a $150,000 Phase I STTR contract to pilot potential solutions. “I love my job. I think that AI can change the world,” she said.
“When you have a technology that is applicable and a customer with very specific and direct needs, that makes for a very good area of development,” Karnes said.
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“If only I had a formula,” said Karnes. “I look for self-motivation, a seed of curiosity, a natural inclination. You can train people on many things, but not to be curious. I look for students who have side projects that show a natural initiative to create things. I also look for open-mindedness. A lot of students are accustomed to having everything worked out. I want interns who wonder about things that haven’t been created yet. Then I try to set students up to accomplish these tasks.”
Ubihere is committed to helping give students real-world experience. Interns have mentors who are recent graduates.
“For GenX, the purpose of work is important. The best motivating factor is to make sure they understand how the work they are doing fits inside the larger whole,” Karnes said. “Eve’s assignment started out as a smaller step, but her contribution to the intellectual curiosity and her experience to solve the problem she was assigned made it larger. She made it personal. Her determination is just the type of intern we hope for.
Myadze-Pike counsels her peers to celebrate and embrace the opportunity to grow. “Do things you haven’t done before,” she said. “Open your eyes to opportunities. When you are working for a company that cares what you have to say, learn to grow. You are having conversations with people who are changing the world. The more I hear about AI capabilities, the more I want to participate. When you are working on projects that have real-world impact, the hardest thing is to stop.”
