2024, For Me

The Earth finishes yet another orbit around the Sun ☀️, and I once again reflect on the past events with a brief summary of what happened.


Table of Contents

  1. The Ups
    1. Q1: January - March
    2. Q2: April - June
    3. Q3: July - September
    4. Q4: October - December
  2. The Downs
  3. Last but not Least


2024 came with a lot of learning and change. While at the times it was really hard, looking back I can say that it was all worth it.

The Ups

Q1: January - March

  • As winter times are slow, I watched some great movies, one of which definitely left a mark (The Zone of Interest) especially with the closing scene and one particular review: “We should ask this: is this also us? Do we do this, too? Do we do this every single day?”
  • In February, I started working at an AI startup based in Berlin with a team of lots of amazing people.
  • I also served as a reviewer for CVPR 2024. This was my first big conference review experience which helped me learn a lot. Later through the year, I also reviewed for other computer vision conferences like 3DV and AAAI.
  • I stepped down from being a Women in CS @ TUM team lead to open the way for the new students. We went together to a great exhibition named Inside Other Spaces which includes colorful environments setup by women artists. A warm way to say goodbye ❤️
  • Traveled to Cologne, Maastricht, Venlo and Prague. 🚅
  • I also discovered my guilty pleasure: Pistachio Cinnamon Rolls.

Q2: April - June

  • After moving to a new place, I survived 1.5 month without internet at home. Since the phone signal was very low in the building for a phone hotspot and I work full-remote, I had to travel to places every day like the university or random coffee shops around Munich and ended up with a mandatory digital detox at home ☕️
  • I traveled to Berlin for a computer vision workshop at work.
  • Euro 2024 was a big thing around this time in Germany ⚽️
  • Went to an exhibition at Khroma Berlin and visited Museum Ludwig in Cologne. – They have a great Andy Warhol collection, definitely worth a visit!

Q3: July - September

  • I visited Max-Planck-Institute for Informatics in Saarland.
  • I participated in MIT Summer Geometry Initiative (SGI) a summer research program that got me connected to lots of people working on geometry processing. I joined amazing research projects some of which still continues.
  • I bought a desktop PC (for my own GPU needs). A powerful PC tower with Ubuntu – Finally! 💻
  • I spent one week with team in Berlin for a data-focused workshop.
  • Sold most of my belongings, cycled around in nature 🍃 and went to Oktoberfest – best way to say goodbye to Munich 👋

Q4: October - December

  • I moved to Berlin!
  • Visited Festival of Lights 🔦
  • Traveled to Mallorca for a team retreat 🌴
  • I visited the 3D vision research group at UvA. Decided to spend some time to visit friends in the Netherlands, so I traveled to Utrecht, Amsterdam and Eindhoven.
  • Friends came for a visit to Berlin & I discovered an amazing vinyl shop named Rough Trade.
  • Started learning to play piano 🎹 – After so many years of missing saxophone 🎷, it is now the time to learn some music theory!
  • I learned how to do latte art! (Still require some practice though)
  • I traveled to France for an on-site at Grenoble 🗻. After that, I visited a friend who lives in Nice – Lots of memories & things to share ☀️

The Downs

  • I am in the search for an apartment in Berlin 🏡
  • A paper submission failed.
  • I could not finish my reading challenge (partly because I moved around a lot, don’t have some of the books anymore and the rest of them are currently in a box 📦 in the basement). Still, all the books I read this year were truly amazing reads!

Last but not least…

I migrated my blog and merged it with my personal website. I had been slowly (but steadily) working on this over the whole year. I am happy that I switched to a more flexible template since Wordpress was too restrictive. For the ones who are wondering what will happen to codingwoman.com, it will stay but I aim to create a separate space for highlighting the DEI efforts in tech – More exciting things will follow! ✨

Have a great start to 2025! 🫶