An Interview with Siddha Ganju, Forbes (US & Canada 2019) Manufacturing & Industry

Bruno (HE) Mirchevski
Nov 4 · 9 min read

(#00053) — Have a goal, plan for it, when you fail, recalibrate.

  1. Who is Siddha Ganju?
  2. Forbes 30 Under 30
  3. Finding Your Passion in Life
  4. Best and Worst Parts of the Industry
  5. The Problem With AI
  6. Most Important Habits For Success
  7. Coping With Failure
  8. Definition of Happiness
  9. Future Plans
  10. Final Advice

Artificial intelligence is a revolutionary technology that benefits our society in many ways.

The growth of AI over the years immensely helped the world to move forward in directions that were once unimaginable. It transformed entire industries and has changed the lives of people for the better.

At this rate, if it’s in the right hands, AI will grow to be one of society’s best revelations.

Meet Siddha Ganju, an AI expert, a self-driving car architect at Nvidia that works with artificial intelligence and strives to make a positive difference by employing this technology into our daily lives. She is one of the people who contribute daily to the progress of our society.

Ganju’s exquisite line of work and the effort put in the industry earned her a place on Forbes’s “30 Under 30 US & Canada 2019: Manufacturing & Industry” list.

I had the pleasure to interview this young and successful woman, as well as to find out a bit more about her success story and the work she does with AI. I warmly recommend everyone to take time and read Ganju’s story.

Enjoy it.


Hi Siddha and welcome to this interview! Thank you for taking the time to be a part of this mission! Now, can you tell us more about who you are and what do you do? How did you choose your current career path?

Thank you for this opportunity!

I’ve been reading your interviews on Medium and they are very impressive and inspiring.

Currently, I’m a self-driving car architect at Nvidia.

It entails training and validating neural networks for autonomous vehicles.

We get to perform all sorts of experiments and simulate all possible scenarios to ensure our system can handle any situation it might encounter in the real world.

My journey in AI started out during my Bachelor’s. Back then I was an avid chess player, now not so much.

During our AI course, I learned about Deep Blue, the IBM supercomputer that beat grandmaster Kasparov.

I was stunned, to say the least. I simply could not digest how an algorithm could be so good at chess that it defeated one of the greatest minds in the field.

I spent a lot of time figuring out and implementing the algorithm. When I was finally done, it gave me a profound appreciation for algorithms. At that time, I also dabbled in robotics and machine learning.

Like most people, I learned a lot about machine learning from Andrew Ng’s Coursera course.

Then during graduation at Carnegie Mellon University, I had a full immersion in all things artificial intelligence.

I worked on a research project related to visual question answering, a field of AI in which a computer is expected to answer a question related to an image, such as “How many dogs are there in the picture?”.

Our research utilized weak supervision because we expect that as human-AI interaction starts to increase we would be able to take advantage of all that information and use it to make strides in the field.

Imagine being able to ask your phone “Where are my keys?”, or ultimately having AI describe an entire movie to a blind person.

Of course, this would not have been possible without the amazing mentors, family, friends, colleagues, and professors who supported me throughout my journey and encouraged me to pursue my interests. I owe them a lot.


I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate you on being among the Forbes 30 under 30, in the category of Manufacturing & Industry! Was this a dream come true? What do you believe most contributed to this success?

Aha, this has a funny story behind it. It was early morning around 5 AM PST when my mailbox chimed “You’ve got mail”! It was from Forbes, amongst other congratulatory remarks, it said I was a Forbes 30 Under 30.

Hmm, okay, I honestly wasn’t sure if it was legit, at this point in time I was so used to spam that I simply moved to the next email.

I continued my day, went to work, then at lunchtime, I was checking out Twitter and the #forbes30u30 was trending, and I was like whoa! I read the email again, fact-checked the person who sent the email and looked at the Forbes website to make sure I was there.

Phew, the email was legit! I guess that’s when it set in. Looking back, I was probably still asleep when I read the email.

Forbes 30 Under 30 awardee with the 2019 Magazine.

I’m certainly excited about Forbes. It’s not something that I imagined, and I am incredibly thankful for the honor. There was no one factor, instead, it was a culmination of a lot of factors.


Since you have already found your passion in life, I am wondering what would you advise everyone who still struggles to find theirs? What are the things everyone should do to discover their calling in life?

Passion is constantly evolving. I would advise people to keep learning, experimenting with different aspects to find what sticks, volunteering with different organizations, etc.

Microsoft’s CEO Mr. Nadella once said, “Don’t Be a Know-It-All, Be a Learn-It-All”. I think that’s an excellent motto.

Love at first sight for Amateur Astronomers. Learn more here: http://cams.seti.org/FDL/

Passion is not necessarily love-at-first-sight. Sometimes it takes a while and some struggle to find it.


How challenging it is to be involved in a fast-growing industry such as the one for artificial intelligence? What would you say are the best and worst parts of it?

Ah, keeping up with the literature is one of the hardest parts. We have all heard the saying “The only truth about change is that it’s constant” and that’s the same with artificial intelligence, a state of the art today is baseline tomorrow.

But that’s not it, using the new baseline in one’s field of work is also important. That’s where code releases and reproducibility are the main factors.

At the end of the day, you just have to keep at it. And it’s not possible for you to know everything, but it is possible to constantly learn and constantly improve. Keeping up with the times is where all the good old newsletters and paper reading groups come in handy.

Thanks to O’Reilly Media, AIDL, TwiML&AI, DeepAI, deeplearning.ai for keeping everyone on their toes. If anyone knows what’s happening, it’s these people!

With the Big-Wigs of AI: Left-Right, Anirudh Koul, Head of AI, Aira, Arthur Chan, Admin of the most active FB group for Artificial Intelligence/Deep Learning, or AIDL, Siddha Ganju

Of course, the upside of all of this is that we keep learning about new and exciting developments in this field constantly. What was unthinkable as late as three years ago is now commonplace. Imagine what we will see in 2022!


According to you, is AI an existential threat to humanity? Why? Please explain.

We all have witnessed first-hand how AI has dramatically improved the lives of people, more so with those who have disabilities.

However, like any tool, it can do great things in the hands of the right people and not so great things in the hands of the wrong people.

So it is ultimately our job as a people to hold our political leaders and institutions accountable to ensure that this amazing tool is only used for good.


What are the five most important habits that are crucial for success in any field?

That’s a very numerically pointed question! I don’t claim to know all of the answers, but I found the following guiding principles useful in my life.

The Long-Period Comets Team. NASA Frontier Development Lab 2017 Left to Right - Bill Diamond, CEO of SETI Institute, Peter Jenniskens, Marcello di Cicco, Andres Plata Stapper, Antonio Ordonez, Siddha Ganju. Missing team-member: Susana Zogbhi, Jack Collison

Ambition — The will to succeed and make a difference is a fundamental driving force behind any endeavor.

Perseverance and determination — Life is not a sprint; it’s a marathon. Perseverance is essential when things will inevitably get difficult along the way.

Grit and Fearlessness — Sometimes you just need to be bold and shameless. Only the deep sea diver gets the pearl.

Optimism — A healthy dose of optimism is necessary to keep the train going. The best is yet to come.

Empathy — All of this is ultimately futile unless tempered with compassion and empathy.


Have you ever failed? If so, what are the best ways to cope with failure?

Yes, I have failed. If I’m not failing, I’m not learning.

My motto is, “Have a goal, plan for it, when you fail, recalibrate.”

Without planning you’re not going to get anywhere. So plan. And don’t just plan for success, plan for failure too. Because you’re going to fail.

No matter what, no matter when, you will fail, so incorporate that buffer and have contingency plans, and recalibrate.


What do you enjoy doing besides work? What matters in life? Can you share your definition of happiness?

That’s deep! I wonder what happiness is, is it that I have the ability to know my heart rate at this minute with a smartwatch, or is just being blissfully unaware.

Is happiness learning the ancient Jedi techniques from Yoda, or seeing a neural network train nicely, or sleeping for 8 hours straight?

A Happy Practical Deep Learning for Cloud, Mobile and Edge Journey on Amazon | O’Reilly | GitHub

I am someone who can find happiness in little things and try to create positive energy for whatever I do, be it hiking while appreciating the beauty of nature, or doing the dishes (a chore I despise but am happy to do), all the way to writing a book on AI.


Where do you see yourself and your work in the next 5–10 years? Do you have any milestones that you want to reach by then?

I prefer to live life in the now and be fully present in what is happening right now.

That said, of course, I plan, or I should say at least try to plan for the future.

Personally, I would love to be a violin virtuoso sometime in the coming years.


Lastly, what is the best life advice that you can give to anyone who is reading this interview? Why is it important?

Show up! Throughout my career, showing up has proved to be half the effort, the other half is always working smartly to do the job.

Don’t be scared to ask questions, ask for help, and most importantly, don’t feel that you are under the imposter syndrome.

Share your knowledge, for it's only when you teach someone, do you learn more deeply.

Outside the Proton Synchrotron, CERN, 2015

Be brave enough to pursue a career that makes you feel fulfilled. That’s the best way to give your 100% to the world and become the best version of yourself.

Let this story be an inspiration to pursue your dreams, as well as a reminder that when you love something and you are passionate about it, there is nothing stopping you.

You can do great things that will not only help you but help others as well.

Be courageous, embrace change, and make the first step.


“The Mission to Empower 1 Million Entrepreneurs”


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Bruno (HE) Mirchevski

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The Logician (Dreamer) 👁️ Don’t follow me. I am lost too!😎 Founder of HE Group - www.hegroup.info (Investor) 📈

The Logician

The Official Publication of The Logician

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