When I was a kid, my school took us the boston science museum and I wandered off to the microscope exhibit. The museum collected and displayed a bunch of things from Boston Bay, and looking in- as a kid learning about computers- it seemed like some of the "animacules" behaved in complex ways- like a computer program with sensor input and mechanical actuators. Some would spiral endlessly while others would zip forward, then back, then turn and zip forward again. I decided then and there I would figure out how these things worked, applying my hacker knowledge of computers.

That led to a career in biology although I don't think I really used microscopes much at all over the next 30 years. Recently I adjusted my hobbies and built a microscope from components and use it to apply object detection to tardigrades. Guess what- the state of the art is to collect enormous numbers of images of a microbiotic organism and cluster them into a small number of states (like a markov model) and estimate the transitions between them. I don't even want to solve any specific problem- I just love watching tardigrades. They're hilarious little animacules.