Chapter 790

Before Thorne could speak, Vesta chimed in graciously, “You flatter me.”

Dr. Lucas nodded with a smile and asked Vesta what she was currently working on.

Vesta: “Thorne handed Neural Nexus Tech over to me last year for practice, but I’m ashamed to say I haven’t produced any stellar results so far.”

Dr. Lucas smiled and said, “Doing research isn’t something that happens overnight. It’s very normal not to have results right away.”

After that, they continued to chat about some Al-related topics. During this time, others also joined in, and the overall conversation was quite pleasant.

Some people who knew of Vesta before but didn’t really know her capabilities were quite surprised after the chat. “I didn’t expect Ms. Hawkins to have such a deep understanding of every module in the Al field. That’s truly impressive.”

Vesta smiled, “You flatter me.”

Henley Hawkins and Maureen Spencer were standing not far from Vesta’s group. Hearing someone praise Vesta, smiles appeared on their faces as well.

In fact, they both hoped Vesta could do research under Dr. Lucas. After all, Dr. Lucas had a top-tier research team. Spending a few years by his side would surely allow Vesta to forge her own brilliant path.

After all, although Dr. Lucas’s domestic status wasn’t as high as Kenton Wagner’s, his global influence wasn’t much lesser.

And Dr. Lucas had a deep international network.

What’s more, two scientists with significant global influence had already emerged from Dr. Lucas’s mentorship.

They had already mentioned this matter to Thorne a few days ago.

Thorne had also agreed.

Now, seeing Dr. Lucas and the people around them so acknowledging of Vesta’s professional abilities, they knew the chances of success were very high.

However, Thorne didn’t ask about this on the spot. Instead, when the others dispersed and he, Vesta, and Dr. Lucas went upstairs together, home brought the matter up to Dr. Lucas privately.

Hearing this, Dr. Lucas smiled and said, “Ms. Hawkins has good professional abilities and is a student of Smith. Naturally, there’s no problem if she wants to join my team to learn.”

As he spoke, he paused and asked Vesta about her Ph.D. research direction, when she graduated, and what research she had generally been doing over the past two years.

These were much more in-depth questions.

Hearing this, Vesta paused and detailed her Ph.D. research direction.

As for her research focus over the past two years… She said, “For the past two years, I’ve been following a team researching multimodal fusion…”

Dr. Lucas nodded and asked again, “In the field of autonomous driving, multimodal fusion is indeed a challenging problem that needs continuous breakthroughs.”

Then, he asked her in detail what progress she had made over the past two years.

Neural Nexus Tech had achieved some results recently, and Vesta mentioned them. However, perhaps because Thorne was present, she added after finishing, “I’m ashamed to say that these aren’t my achievements. I was just following the team and learning. I didn’t actually produce any substantive research myself.”

Hearing this, Dr. Lucas seemed to realize something. He looked down at the wine glass in his hand, paused, glanced sideways at

“It’s been almost two years

Thorne and then still said to Vesta, since graduation, and you still haven’t had any breakthrough achievements. This… is indeed not quite enough.”

One had to know that most of the doctoral students in his institute who had

graduated less than half a year ago already had clear, measurable progress of their

own.