Q&A
with Kayo Yin, Class of 2017
A French national of Japanese heritage, Kayo joined École Jeannine Manuel as an adaptation student at the age of 10. She went on to sit the OIB exam with an S major, before joining the first ever undergraduate cohort of École Polytechnique’s new Bachelor of Science program in 2017. In September 2020, Kayo received the Global Undergraduate Award for her Bachelor’s thesis, “Sign Language Translation with Transformers”. She is now a masters student in Language Technologies at Carnegie Mellon University.
What was it like being a guinea pig for École Polytechnique’s first ever bachelor program?
That’s exactly what it was—we really were guinea pigs! Our first year, the course load was quite rough, as each professor was very enthusiastic to teach their own subject, whether it was math, physics, economics or computer science! But the administration was very responsive to our feedback, things got more balanced after that and I was lucky to benefit from truly excellent teaching in that program.
What made you choose the course?
It was my homeroom teacher, Mr. Zajac, who first told me about the program and said I would be a good fit. I initially had planned to study medicine, but Mr. Zajac knew that I loved math and physics and encouraged me to apply. I knew I wanted to stay in France for university, but hadn’t found anything that seemed like the right fit. The Polytechnique Bachelor program offered the perfect mix of an international environment combined with the rigorous way in which the French approach STEM subjects.
Do you feel like your gender could be a disadvantage in what has traditionally been a male-dominated field?
In the Polytechnique Bachelor of Science, the gender split is actually becoming fairly close 50/50. Yet it is true that as a graduate student, I find myself occasionally suffering from impostor syndrome, which is quite common among women in these fields. I’ve been fortunate, though, to be surrounded by wonderful supervisors who are very supportive of my research, confident in my abilities and push me towards the most ambitious challenges. They remind me that my gender does not stop me from excelling in scientific studies!
Tell us a bit about your current research focus.
My field is called Natural Language Processing, where we study how to make computers understand and respond to human languages. For example, Google Translate uses this technology, but even Google’s software can fail to grasp important subtleties in language. This is especially true when translating documents, where you need to understand context to do it correctly, which is what I’m working on. My current research focuses on multilingual dialogue translation, where we try to make speakers of different languages understand each other in a single conversation. There is still a lot to explore in this research area—and I hope one day my research will help break down language barriers between people!
Has the school’s mission of promoting international understanding influenced your research?
At Jeannine Manuel, the students are very open-minded. Even though we all come from different backgrounds, the school infuses you with the same motivation to make the world a better place. The school really pushed us to think carefully about how we can give back to the community. How I was taught in high school has really influenced all my motivations for the research I am doing—I want to create something that will benefit various communities!