This colloquium will provide an overview of my PhD journey, combining insights from my research with the personal experiences that came with it. I wish this colloquium to be more than methods and results. I want to take a step back and discuss how I arrived at my research topic, how my interests evolved throughout the PhD, and what I learned along the way.
My research interest started with my Master's assignment in Portugal, where I got the opportunity to work for the first time on a real-world application of computer vision and AI. I am an engineer at heart, which means I strive to find solutions to problems that need one. This is what eventually led me from agricultural and forestry applications, which were at the core of my Master's, to medical imaging and, more specifically, to computer vision and AI applied to the assessment of dysphagia.
Throughout the PhD, I explored how AI and computer vision could be used to support the assessment of swallowing, gradually moving towards the integration of different sources of information. The work evolved as I encountered new challenges, from working with medical data and clinical workflows to dealing with limited datasets and translating technical ideas into solutions that could have practical relevance.
The colloquium will therefore not only discuss what was achieved, but also what did not work, how decisions were made, and how the research developed over time. I will conclude with the main lessons I take from the PhD: both as a researcher and as a human being (and its inherent insecurities).